Analysis and control of transport phenomena in wet-chemical etching processes (TWI.5453)

In this project the expertise of mathematicians and experts in micromachining is combined to study wet-chemical etching processes for the fabrication of three-dimensional objects. In these etching processes a mask is used to protect selected areas from etching. The shape of the object machined by etching depends on the transport of etching agents to and etching products from the solid. This process can be controlled only when the transport phenomena can be understood. To solve the transport equations advanced mathematical methods, analytical and numerical ones, will be used. The results will be compared to experiments to ensure the validity of the approach.
Etching experiments will be carried out at MESA+ (University of Twente) using silicon and in the laboratories of the industrial partners on stainless steel and nickel. The main results of this project consist of an improved control of the etching process for the fabrication of microsystems and a computer simulation model which is suitable for the analysis of industrial etching processes. The latter being ensured by the active interaction with the industrial partners in this research program.

More inforamtion can be found on the following websites:

• Micromechanical Transducers
• Numerical Analysis and Computational Mechanics

Five companies are involved in this project.