GAS FLOW IN A NEWTORK OF NANOCHANNELS OF VARYING DEPTH MADE BY GRAYSCALE LASER LITOGRAPHY

A procedure is given to manufacture glass-silicon network of nanochannels being 10 et956;m in width and 100 to 500 nm in depth. The process is based on grayscale laser lithography to structure a photosensitive polymer resin in a single step. This is followed by a reactive ion etching step to transfer the resist depth profile into silicon. Experimental leak rate measurements are then carried out on the fabricated networks by applying a given pressure at the inlet and near vacuum conditions at the outlet where a mass spectrometer is used for flow-rate measurement. Numerical simulations using a pore-network model are performed by modelling the flow with a family of slip models. Their ability to represent the global leak rate of a heterogeneous network of conductances when near vacuum condition is applied at the outlet is analyzed.