A simulation program based on a phenomenological surface etching reaction model and on a reactant transport model including shadowing and diffuse particle reflection at the sidewalls was developed to investigate the dependence of the etching rate and profile quality of gas chopping deep reactive ion etching processes on process parameters and sample temperature. The simulations are in good agreement with the experimental results. The dependence of the heating characteristics on the geometry (area, thickness) of teeny microelectromechanical systems devices or membrane-like silicon samples during microstructuring by means of plasma etching was investigated using finite element simulations. It was found that membrane-like samples,are considerably heated unless the membrane area is sufficiently small (