Last week, I calculated the Young’s modulus and residual stress of several different membranes using the pressure-displacement technique. The measurements were performed on at least three different geometries (square and rectangle) and the results were averaged. Wafer Thick. (nm) Por.…

In order to verify our measurement technique for the determination of Young’s modulus of pnc-Si, I decided to look at a PECVD silicon nitride membrane SiMPore is using for cell culture applications. The membrane window is 1 mm x 1…

In my initial report on the Young’s modulus of pnc-Si, I used the generalized pressure-displacement equation to fit my experimental data to extract a Young’s modulus of around 100 GPa (Polysilicon is ~150 GPa). Unfortunately, there was quite a bit…

I first reported the crystallization of free-standing amorphous silicon membranes in this post in January. The last experiment was done inside the susceptor (top and bottom piece). This week, I annealed a set of amorphous 15 nm and 30 nm…

As a follow up to my 15 nm post-Si deposition Ar sputter experiment, I fabricated a set of six wafers with 30 nm Si films this week: three with the Ar sputter process and three without. I annealed these at…

Recently, I have been exploring the temperature dependence of post-Si deposition Ar sputtered films (15 nm thick). Below is a comparison of the average pore size, porosity, and density of pores of Ar and non-Ar sputtered films annealed between 800…

A simple experiment that has never been done is to make a direct comparison between annealing inside and outside the susceptor. Intuitively, we would expect the morphologies to be quite different since the heating mechanism is different for both cases.…

Today I deposited two 30 nm thick Si films and annealed one at 1000 C for 1 min and the other at 1000 C for 5 min. My running hypothesis is that performing an Ar sputter after the silicon deposition…

In a continuing study on how a post-silicon deposition Ar sputter affects morphology, I annealed three 15-nm films for 10 s, 60 s, and 300 s. If you recall in my first report, I found that the Ar sputter increases…

I’ve always suspected that the pore formation process was very quick and to confirm this I looked at a wafer that was annealed for 10 s vs. 60 s. From the distributions, it would appear that the majority of pores…