Wet etching is chemical etching preformed with a liquid etchant. The advantage of wet etching is that it can easily be done in batch processing which makes it a cheep process compared to Dry etching. A disadvantage of wet etchants is the usually isotropic etch behavior, which leads to large bias when etching thick films.

iX-factory can etch a lot of metals, like: Au, Cr, Cu, Ni, Ti, etc, but is specialist in glass etching and silicon etching.

Glass etching

Wet etching of glass is an isotropic etching technique which is done with HF (hydrofluoric acid). Isotropic means that the width of the structure is more than twice the depth of it, and that the corners are rounded. The surfaces of the etched structures are very smooth.

Applications:

• Microfluidic channels
• Gas channels
• Chambers for packaging

Capabilities:

• Nano channel etching
• Deep channel etching (more than 300 um is possible)

Examples:

Will follow!

Anisotropic KOH etching

KOH etching, alkali hydroxides such as KOH, NaOh and LiOH in water, etch silicon at about the same rate for the same molarity. KOH is the most popular, having been in industrial use for decades. Depending on the temperature and concentration, different etch rates and surface roughnesses are possible.

Applications:

• Membrane fabrication
• V-grooves for fiber alignment
• Microfluidic channels
• Ink jet nozzles
• Through wafer interconnection
• Pressure sensors

Capabilities:

• Multilevel etching
• Aligned front and back side etching
• Convex corner compensation
• Crystal alignment
• <100> and <110> silicon

Examples:

Will follow!