M3P.

030

MICROMACHINING OF GORILLA GLASS

Gui Chen, Ching-Hung Hsu, and Mark Ming-Cheng Cheng

Electrical and Computer Engineering, Wayne State University, Detroit MI USA 48202

ABSTRACT bending test.

For the first time, this paper presents micromachining
of gorilla glass, which is a new tough and transparent
substrate, but has not been used in MEMS yet. We have
demonstrated that microstructures made of Gorilla glass
have several advantages for MEMS applications, including
flexibility and high fracture toughness. Wet etching with
hydrofluoric acid (HF) was found more effective because it
prevents creation of sharp corners. The process was
optimized with an additive of hydrochloric acid (HCl) to
reduce surface roughness, and the etching rate is
approximately 12 μm/min. The microcantilevers made of
Gorilla glass is capable to bend 12.26 degrees without
breaking, which is very different from the conventional
brittle glass (including Pyrex or Borosilicate).

KEYWORDS
Gorilla Glass, isotropic etching, glass micromachining Table 1: The comparison of different glasses and silicon.

INTRODUCTION
Glass is widely used in MEMS, including packaging,
microfluidics optical and RF applications. Soda lime glass
has been used in fabrication of fluidic microchannels
which are chemically stable and relatively inexpensive
[2,3]. Pyrex 7740 (Borosilicate glass) is the most
commonly used in anodic bonding in packaging thanks to
high heat resistance, similar thermal expansion coefficient
(compared to silicon), high electrical isolation and high
transparency in visible light [1] [4,5]. The material
properties of various glasses are summarized in Table 1
[6,7]. Recently, Gorilla glass, chemically-strengthened
glass, has been commercialized by Corning for
touch-screen applications. Gorilla glass adapts the
ion-exchange process to allow potassium ions to diffusion
and to form a compressive stress layer on the glass
surfaces. The chemical treatment greatly enhances its
mechanical properties, making Gorilla glass immune to
cracks and flaws (Figure 2). While Gorilla glass has many
properties attractive to MEMS, including hardness
(resistance to scratching), high fracture toughness,
flexibility and antibacterial resistance. Nevertheless, to the
best of our knowledge, there has been no study in the
micromachining of Gorilla Glass.
Figure 2: Chemically Strengthened Gorilla Glass
Traditionally, there are several techniques used in
glass micromachining, including mechanical drilling, laser
micromachining, deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) and wet
etching [8]. Mechanical or ultrasonic drillings typically
generate very rough surfaces and do not offer small
features. DRIE requires expensive equipment and metal
masks to create bombardment of high-energy ions.
Initially, we investigated laser micromachining for Gorilla
glass using femtosecond lasers with wavelength 532nm.
Laser micromachining has been used for Pyrex, and
features can be as small as 10-15 μm. Nevertheless, it has
been found challenging to create microstructures with
Gorilla glass due to its intrinsic high stress, and the
microstructures crack at the sharp edges. Micromachining
of Gorilla glass is isotropic and it prevents creation of sharp
corners. In this paper, the process has been optimized with
an additive of HCl to reduce surface roughness.

EXPERIMENT
Materials: Two different generations of Gorilla glass have
Figure 1: Corning's Gorilla Glass undergoes a 4-point been studied (Gorilla 1 and Gorilla 3). The glasses were cut

978-1-5386-2732-7/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE 1218 Transducers 2017, Kaohsiung, TAIWAN, June 18-22, 2017
into small pieces (2cm×2cm) with a dicing saw. The Figure 3: The etching rates for Gorilla glass with various
conventional surface scribing with diamond pens etching solutions based on BOE, HF and HF/HCl.
unfortunately created irregular shapes, and glass broke
uncontrollably. The glass was cleaned using Piranha
solutions (H2SO4: H2O2) for 30mins.

Wet Etching: An acid-proof adhesive tape was used as a

mask layer. The patterns on the tape (including an array of
holes and cantilevers) were created using a carbon-dioxide
laser cutter, and the tape was applied uniformly on the
glass. The substrate was baked at 1200C for 10mins to
improve adhesion. The etching was conducted at room
temperature with a sealed Teflon container. During the
etching, a magnetic was stirred at 35rpm. The etching
depth was measured by a stylus profiler (Bruker) from the Figure 4: The surface roughness (Rp) for Gorilla glass
masking area to the center of the unmasking areas. The with various etching solutions based BOE, HF and
surface roughness was measured using a white light HF/HCl.
interferometer (WLI, Bruker) using a VSI (vertical
scanning interferometry) mode.

Flexibility test: The flexibility of microcantilever made

of Gorilla glass was studied by a bending experiment. The
experimental setup is shown in Figure 7. A load cell (GSO
Series from Transducer Techniques) was used to measure
the force where the cantilever was subjected to a point
load. One end of cantilever was clamped while the other
end was pressed by a stiff needle. The needle moved in a (a) (b)
constant speed provided by a programmable syringe pump.
Figure 5: WLI images of the surface of etched Gorilla
glass with (a) pure HF and (b) HF:HCl=8:1
RESULTS
Figure 3 and Figure 4 show the etching rate and
surface roughness for different etchants, including BOE Figure 5 shows the surface topology of etched Gorilla
(buffered oxide etch) pure HF and different mixtures of HF glass. For pure HF, many islands were clearly seen. The
to HCl with ratios 4:1, 8:1, 12:1 and 16:1. The surface Gorilla glass consists of different oxides such as cesium
roughness is defined by the root-mean-squared roughness oxide (CaO), magnesium oxide (MgO) and alumina oxide
(Rp) and was measured over a fixed area (434μmx579μm) (Al2O3). For pure HF, the side-products of reactions were
using white light interferometry (WLI). WLI is a insoluable (CaF2, MgF2, AlF3), leaving them on the etched
non-destructive optical measurement of surface topology surfaces and causing very rough surfaces and islands.
of an object. BOE had the slowest etching rate
(0.120μm/min) for Gorilla glass, but the surface etched
was found smooth (~0.6nm). The pure HF had the fastest
rate (12.7 μm/min), but created a rough surface
(RMS~2.2um). The increase in HCl concentration slightly By adding HCl solutions, the insoluble products could be
reduced the etching rate, but improved the surface transformed into soluable products (CaCl2, MgCl2 or
roughness (Figure 3, 4). Interestingly, the roughness did AlCl3) [8].
not reduce linearly with increasing HCl concentration. The
optimal condition for smooth surfaces in Gorilla glass
etching was found HF:HCl=8:1.

Therefore, the roughness of the etched surfaces reduced

with addition of HCl. The roughness also has been found
to increase with high HCl concentration. At room
temperature, the degree of ionization of weak acid HF
should be suppressed with excessive strong acid like HCl.
The etching rate of glass was found slowest for
HF:HCl=4:1 solution. Excessive HCl reduce HF
concentration for glass etching. The optimal conditions to
produce smooth surfaces in Gorilla glass were
HF:HCl=8:1. The Rp value was 0.81um. Figure 6 shows
etched-through holes in Gorilla glass (thickness~500um)
which can be used in microfluidics and MEMS packaging.

1219

Figure 6: An array of etched-through Gorilla glass
(thickness 500um).
Figure 7 shows the set-up of bending test for
microcantilevers made of Gorilla glass. Figure 8 shows the
corresponding load and tip deflection. Interestingly, the
cantilevers were able to deform 12.26 degrees without
breaking, which was very closed to the observation in the 4
points bending test (Figure 1). Our results show the
feasibility to use Gorilla glass in MEMS.
Figure7: The setup for bending testing of microcantilever
made of Gorilla glass.
Figure 8: The load vs deformation of microcantilever
made of Gorilla glass.
1220
The method that we studied here is not limited to
Gorilla 1 and 3. Several new generation of Gorilla glass are
also commercialized from Corning, including Gorilla glass
4, Gorilla glass SR+ and Gorilla glass 5. It may be worthy
to study wet etching of these new glasses and investigate
their applications in MEMS.
CONCLUSIONS
This paper presents characterizations of wet etching of
a new glass, Gorilla glass. The ratio HF:HCl=8:1 was
found optimal for Gorilla glass in order to achieve fast
etching rate and smooth surfaces. Two different
microstructures were fabricated on Gorilla glass, including
etched-through hole arrays and microcantilever. The
mechanical properties of micocantilever made of Gorilla
glass was measured. The cantilevers were able to deform
12.26 degrees. The result shows the feasibility to use
Gorilla glass in MEMS application.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The device was fabricated using Nano Fabrication
Core (nFab) at Wayne State University. We acknowledge
the staff support during the device fabrication. This work
was supported by NSF CAREER Award (1055932).
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