Maskless and resist-free rapid prototyping of three-dimensional structures through electron beam induced deposition (EBID) of carbon in combination with metal-assisted chemical etching (MaCE) of silicon.

In this work, we introduce a maskless, resist-free rapid prototyping method to fabricate three-dimensional structures using electron beam induced deposition (EBID) of amorphous carbon (aC) from a residual hydrocarbon precursor in combination with metal-assisted chemical etching (MaCE) of silicon. We demonstrate that EBID-made patterned aC coating, with thickness of even a few nanometers, acts as a negative "mask" for the etching process and is sufficient for localized termination of the MaCE of silicon. Optimal aC deposition settings and gold film thickness for fabrication of high-aspect-ratio nanoscale 3D silicon structures are determined. The speed necessary for optimal aC feature deposition is found to be comparable to the writing speed of standard Electron Beam Lithography and the MaCE etching rate is found to be comparable to standard deep reactive ion etching (DRIE) rate.