Reflection characteristics of a copper metal-organic chemical-vapor-deposited thin film for vertical micromirror applications

We introduce Cu metal-organic chemical-vapor deposition as a potential means of conformal metal coating of the sidewalls of micromachined vertical mirrors. The optimal process temperature was experimentally found to be 215 degreesC, which gives high step coverage of better than 90%, and the surface roughness was less than 27 nm. The roughness, measured with an atomic force microscope, will induce a scattering loss less than 0.12 dB, which is small enough for vertical micromirror application. The experimental reflectances of Cu thin film were measured with a distributed-feedback laser (1550 nm) and found to be greater than 0.9 for incidence angles of 22.5 and 45, and these reflectances were in good agreement with theoretical values. (C) 2002 Optical Society of America.