Laser micro/nano scale processing of glass and silicon

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2006-05

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The revolutionary progress in semiconductor, communication, and information industries based on electronic and photonic technologies demands for the development and enhancement of new laser processes to support micro and nanotechnologies. This dissertation is aimed at exploring the use of lasers for micro and nano scale processing of glass and silicon, the most commonly used materials in the IC industry. The objective of the dissertation is two fold: a) use lasers for locally micro bonding glass and silicon wafers, and b) use lasers for nanopatterning glass and silicon substrates by circumventing the diffraction limit of light. In the first part of the thesis, glass and silicon wafers are bonded locally in microscale by a pulsed Nd:YAG laser. Glass is transparent to the wavelength used and hence the laser beam passes through the glass wafer and is absorbed by silicon. As a result, silicon is melted and upon resolidification bonding is realized between the two substrates. The transient melting and resolidification of the substrates is studied experimentally and compared to the simulation results of a finite element numerical model. The bonded areas are studied in detail using a scanning electron microscope and a chemical analysis is done to understand the bonding mechanism. In the second part of the thesis, nanopatterns are created on glass and silicon substrates by circumventing the diffraction limit of light. The nanofeatures are created by irradiating silica and gold nanospheres deposited on a substrate. In case of silica spheres, features approximately half the diameter of the sphere were obtained by utilizing the optical field enhancement around the spheres. In case of gold spheres, features as small as 40 nm were realized by the excitation of coherent resonant electron plasma oscillations. The effect of sphere size, laser wavelength, polarization, incident angle, and energy were studied experimentally. Finally, these experimental results are compared with the numerical results from a multidimensional, heat transfer model.

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