Effect Of Micro-Channel Structure On Thermal Stresses Of Silicon Dioxide Film

Thanks to the rapid development of MEMS microfabrication technologies, silicon micro-channel structure has been successfully applied in the micro-channel plate(MCP) devices, etc. With the most advanced MEMS microfabrication technologies, a lot of performances of silicon micro-channel plate devices, such as background noise, resolution, aspect ratio, service life and environment protection characteristic, has been substantially improved and breakthrough the limits of the predecessor LSG-MCP. However, there are still many problems about the processing technologies of silicon micro-channel plate, such as the insulation properties of the silicon dioxide film on the micro-channel structure need to be improved. The most important reason for the decline of insulating properties is that cracks, wrinkles or even fall off caused by the thermal stress generated in an oxidation process.This paper analyses the main factors which affect the thermal stresses of the silicon dioxide film on the micro-channel structure by both experiments and simulation of ANSYS software. It is found out that the stresses generated in thermal oxidation cause the damage of the film which lead to a decrease of the insulation properties. And the porosity and oxidation temperature, etc. are the main factors which affect on the stress of silicon dioxide film on the silicon micro-channel structure. Several improvement methods which can reduce the stress of silicon dioxide film are proposed.