Frictional Properties of the Micro-Textured Surface of Anisotropically Etched Silicon

Anisotropic etching of silicon produces regular shapes that consist of {111} crystal planes. Applying a line-and-space mask pattern, textured surfaces with periodic regular shapes such as V-grooves are easily obtained. This paper first describes the design principle for such textures. By choosing an appropriate crystal orientation, symmetric or asymmetric grooves can be obtained. Variation of the texture profile is also discussed. The frictional properties are then examined. The effects of the texture were: (1) friction could be decreased, and (2) frictional directionality could be obtained with a combination of asymmetric texture and softer materials

Nano-Texturing of Surfaces by Constricting Epitaxial Growth of Molecules

This paper discusses an application of molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) to a nano-texturing process. Silicon molecules grow laterally along the specific crystal planes of a silicon substrate under a specific condition. It was found that a pre-processed array of holes could compose nano-texture because it constricted these lateral growths to the specific directions of substrate. This paper clarifies the mechanism and the design of texturing. Depending on the arrangement of the hole array, various textures were obtained and their geometry and accuracy were also discussed