Micro structuration of gaas surface by wet etching: towards a specific surface behavior

Resonant microelectromechanical systems are promising devices for real time and highly sensitive measurements. The sensitivity of such sensors to additional mass loadings which can be increased thanks to the miniaturisation of devices is of prime importance for biological applications. The miniaturisation of structures passes through a photolithographic process and wet chemical etching. So, this paper presents new results on the anisotropic chemical etching of the gallium arsenide (GaAs) crystal used for this application, in several solutions. This paper focuses on the micro/nanostructuration of the sensing surface to increase the sensor sensitivity. Indeed, this active surface will be biofunctionalized to operate in biological liquid media in view of biomolecules detection. Several experimental conditions of etching bath composition, concentration and temperature were examined to obtain a large variety of geometrical surfaces topographies and roughness. According to the orientation dependence of the chemical etching process, the experiments were also performed on various GaAs crystal plates. The bath 1 H3PO4:9 H2O2:1 H2O appeared to be particularly adapted to the fabrication of the GaAs microstructured membrane: indeed, the bath is highly stable, anisotropic, and, as a function of temperature, it allows the production of a large variety of GaAs surface topographies.