Silicon nanostructures produced by laser direct etching

A laser direct-write process has been applied to structure silicon on a nanometer scale. In this process, a silicon substrate, placed in a chlorine ambience, is locally heated above its melting point by a continuous-wave laser and translated by high-resolution direct-current motor stages. Only the molten silicon reacts spontaneously with the molecular chlorine, resulting in trenches with the width of the laser-generated melt. Trenches have been etched with a width of less than 70 nm. To explain the functional dependence of the melt size on absorbed power, the calculations based on a two-phase steady state heat model are presented, taking the temperature-dependent thermal conductivities and optical parameters into account. ©1995 American Institute of Physics.