A statistical method to optimize the chemical etching process of Zinc Oxide thin films

Zinc Oxide (ZnO) is an attractive material for micro and nanoscale devices. Its desirable semiconductor, piezoelectric, and optical properties make it useful in applications ranging from microphones to missile warning systems to biometric sensors. This work introduces a demonstration of blending statistics and chemical etching of thin films to identify the dominant factors, and interaction between factors, and develop statistically enhanced models on etch rate and selectivity of ZnO thin films. Over other mineral acids, ammonium chloride (NH4Cl) solutions have commonly been used to wet etch microscale ZnO devices because of their controllable etch rate and near-linear behavior. Etchant concentration and temperature were found to have a significant effect on etch rate. Moreover, this is the first demonstration that has identified multifactor interactions between temperature and concentration and between temperature and agitation. A linear model was developed relating etch rate and its va...

氧化锌（Zinc Oxide，ZnO）是一种适用于微纳尺度器件的极具应用价值的材料。其优异的半导体、压电与光学特性，使其可应用于从麦克风、导弹预警系统到生物识别传感器等诸多领域。本研究提出了一种融合统计分析与薄膜化学刻蚀的实验方法，用于识别刻蚀过程中的主导因素及其交互作用，并针对氧化锌薄膜的刻蚀速率与选择比构建统计优化模型。相较于其他无机酸，氯化铵（ammonium chloride，NH4Cl）溶液因刻蚀速率可控且刻蚀过程接近线性，常被用于微尺度氧化锌器件的湿法刻蚀。研究发现，刻蚀液浓度与温度对刻蚀速率具有显著影响。此外，本研究首次证实了温度与浓度、温度与搅拌之间的多因素交互作用。本研究构建了关联刻蚀速率及其……的线性模型。