Deep reactive ion etching for high aspect ratio microelectromechanical components

A deep reactive ion etch (DRIE) process for fabrication of high aspect ratio trenches has been developed. Trenches with aspect ratios exceeding 20 and vertical sidewalls with low roughness have been demonstrated. The process has successfully been used in the fabrication of silicon-on-insulator (SOI) released comb drive based resonators and tunable capacitors for MEMS applications. Brief characterizations of the devices are presented.