Engineering Research Equipment Grant: Reactive Ion Etching System

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Etching of GaAs and other compound semiconductors is performed with wet chemical techniques. Wet chemical etching present several limitations, and therefore the P.I.'s wish to acquire a reactive ion etching (RIE) system. RIE provides highly anisotropic etching due to kinetically assisted chemical processes. This anisotropic etching will allow definition of smaller geometries than are currently possible with wet chemical etching capabilities due to a reduction in undercutting of masking patterns. With proper conditions, lateral etch rates close to zero can be obtained with RIE. This is particularly important for processing GaAs because unlike silicon, GaAs has no liquid etchants which will result in little or no undercutting of the masking pattern. Another advantage of RIE is the ability to selectively etch layers. This is due to the high selectivity of the etchants used. Howevern even when this etchant selectivity is not possible, one can still selectively remove layers with RIE due to the easy incorporation of end point detection. End point detection is the monitoring by spectrometric methods of one or more of the reactants or effluent to determine when a layer has been removed.