Silicon shadow masks for fine-feature thin-film depositions

In this paper we investigate the possibility of using silicon wafers with anisotropically etched-through slots as shadow masks. We report slots having widths of 11 µm and 172 µm. A double-etching scheme that makes possible a considerably narrower slot width as well as greater uniformity of the widths of the slots is evaluated. This scheme also opens the possibility of very close slot-to-slot spacing.