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Journal of Materials Science and Nanotechnology | Volume 3
October 07-08, 2019 | Frankfurt, Germany
Materials Science and Engineering
3rd International Conference on
Mater Sci Nanotechnol, Volume 3
Bosch DRIE enabler for MEMS - Invention and technical progress
Andrea Urban
Robert Bosch GmbH, Germany
MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems) at Bosch look
back on 30 years of development and production.
Silicon Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DRIE), also known as the
“Bosch Process”, is one of the worldwide established MEMS
key manufacturing processes on the market. The starting
point of this plasma trench etch process for silicon dates back
to the development in the early 1990’s at Bosch Corporate
Research Center on a prototype equipment. “Bosch DRIE”
became the enabler for silicon MEMS applications and
products. A large variety of interesting bulk and surface
micro machined MEMS products on the market address
automotive, consumer and IoT applications, which nowadays
support the daily life of all of us. These are pressure sensors,
micro mirrors, microphone devices, gas flow and fluidic
sensors, through-silicon-vias (TSV’s) and inertial sensors. New
automotive and consumer applications like autonomous
driving or virtual reality are increasingly pushing inertial
sensor performance improvements like higher sensitivity
and resolution. This demands a technical progress on “Bosch
DRIE”, with progress mainly focused on the plasma etch
equipment side. Cross wafer results and sensor performance
is strongly influenced by plasma reactor conditions like
chamber geometry, gas distribution, plasma source and
substrate electrode construction and with strong influences
of plasma reactormaterials on sensor response andwafer test
results. Therefore, a close co-operation between equipment
suppliers andMEMSmanufacturers is needed to improve and
optimize DRIE equipment hardware and processes, in parallel
to product development, in order to fulfil enhanced MEMS
product requirements for the future.
The “Bosch Process” turned out to be the key technology
behind the worldwide production of billions of silicon MEMS
sensors every year, able to structure silicon at arbitrary shapes
with very high etch rates and at extremely high precision
nowadays.
Speaker Biography
Andrea Urban, born at Schilp in 1967, Waiblingen, Germany. She graduated
her high school in 1987. She completed her diploma in 1992 in the Studies
of “Materials Engineering and Surface Technologies”, at Fachhochschule
Aalen, Germany. She joined the Robert Bosch GmbH Corporate Research
and Technology Center in Stuttgart, Germany in 1992. She is working as
a technology specialist mainly related to inertial sensor manufacturing,
which strongly influenced the development and installation of MEMS
acceleration sensors and gyroscopes for mass-manufacturing in Bosch`s
production line. She is the co-inventor of the "Bosch Deep Reactive
Ion Etching Process”. She was entrusted with the co-ordination of the
European Semiconductor Equipment Assessment I-SPEEDER project,
which had a significant impact on the equipment tool basis for advanced
Deep Reactive Ion Etching. In 2003, she joined as the new founded
Engineering Sensor Process Technology division at Robert Bosch GmbH,
Reutlingen, Germany. As a Senior Expert working on the development
of new process technologies and their transfer into series production for
upcoming generations of MEMS sensors.
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