Robust micromachining of compliant mechanisms by nickel silicide
Bibliographic record
Abstract
We are introducing an innovative sacrificial surface micromachining process that enhances the robustness of freestanding microstructures and compliant mechanisms. Fabrication of a compliant mechanism using conventional sacrificial surface micromachining results in a non-planar structure with a step between the structure and its anchor. During mechanism actuation or assembly, stress accumulation at the structure step can easily pass the yield strength of the material and lead to structure failure. Our process overcomes this problem by eliminating the step between the structure and its anchor, and achieves planarization without using Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP). The process is based on low temperature and post-CMOS compatible nickel silicide technology. We use a layer of amorphous silicon (a-Si) as the sacrificial layer. High etch selectivity between silicon and nickel silicide in the XeF2gas enables us to use the silicide to anchor the structures to the substrate. The sacrificial layer is locally converted to nickel silicide to form the anchors. The formed silicide has the same thickness as the sacrificial layer; therefore, the structure is virtually flat. The maximum measured step between the anchor and the sacrificial layer is about 10 nm on a 300 nm thick sacrificial layer.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".