Fabrication of polyimide sacrificial layers with inclined sidewalls based on reactive ion etching

Polyimide is used as a sacrificial material because of its low stress, its removable ability and its compatibility with standard micromachining processes. In this work, polyimide structures with inclined sidewalls are fabricated with a reactive ion etching process, where SiO2 is used as the hard-mask material. The structures can be further used as sacrificial layers in micro-electro-mechanical systems infrared (IR) sensors to support IR absorbers, to realize the thermal connections between the absorbers and the thermopiles, and to scale down the size of the sensors. As a result, IR sensors with low-residual-stress absorption, high structural stability, low heat loss and small dimensions can be achieved.