Fabrication of capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers using a boron etch-stop method

Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers (CMUTs) fabricated using Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) wafers often have large thickness variation of the flexible plate, which causes variation in both pull-in voltage and resonant frequency across the CMUT array. This work presents a bond and boron etch-stop scheme for fabricating the flexible plate of a CMUT. The proposed fabrication method enables precise control of the plate thickness variation and is a low cost alternative to the SOI-based process. N-type silicon wafers are doped with boron to a surface concentration of > 10²⁰ cm⁻³ using solid planar diffusion predeposition at 1125 °C for 30, 60, and 90 min. Process simulations are used to predict the boron doping profiles and validated with secondary ion mass spectrometry measurements. The doped wafers are fusion-bonded to a silicon dioxide surface and thinned down using an 80 °C, 20 wt% potassium hydroxide solution with isopropyl alcohol added to increase the etch selectivity to the highly doped boron layer. The resulting plate thickness uniformity is estimated from scanning electron micrographs to a mean value of 2.00εm±2.5%. The resonant frequency in air for a 1-D linear CMUT array is measured to 12MHz±2.5%. Furthermore, hydrophone measurements show that the fabricated devices can be used to emit sound pressure in the ultrasonic frequency domain.