1 Characterization of low-temperature bulk micromachining of silicon using an SF 6 /O 2 inductively coupled plasma F. Jiang 1,2 , A. Keating 2 , M. Martyniuk 1 , K. Prasad 3 , L. Faraone 1 , J. M. Dell 1 1 School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia 2 School of Mechanical and Chemical Engineering, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, WA, Australia 3 School of Engineering, AUT University, Auckland, New Zealand Abstract The principal aim of this work was to characterize deep silicon etching at sample temperatures well-below room temperature, using SF 6 /O 2 inductively coupled plasma (ICP) for micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) applications. In this paper, a study of the etch rates and etch profiles of deep silicon trenches has been undertaken for a series of etching parameters, including RF power, sample stage temperature, and O 2 gas flow rate. Based on the experimental observations, the formation of an SiO x F y passivation layer, the rate of ion collision through the sheath field, and the silicon crystallographic orientation, are found to be the three main parameters that affect the etching process. In addition, the formation mechanism of “black silicon” (nanopillar-based Si structures) has also been proposed based on the experimental data and a simple physical model. For the purpose of silicon bulk micromachining, an optimized recipe has been developed that is suitable for the fabrication of high aspect ratio Si cantilevers on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) based waveguide wafers. Introduction The continued development of plasma etching technology is extremely important to the semiconductor device manufacturing industry, as well as being an essential process for the