Refurbishment of a 20-Year Old RIE System

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The purpose of this Research Tool and Instruments (RTI) application is to request a grant to refurbish a 20- year old Reactive Ion Etching (RIE) System. The system is located in the Center for Integrated RF Engineering (CIRFE) clean room facility at the University of Waterloo, which is dedicated to the fabrication of micro and nano devices. The PECVD system is used for etching of silicon dioxides SiO2 or/and silicon nitride SiNx films. Over the past 20 years, this system has been the workhorse of the CIRFE clean room and has been an essential tool for successfully completing many fabrication processes and developing a wide range of novel devices. After going through few repair cycles over the past 20 years, some of the system hardware components are no longer commercially available. It became clear that the system needs an overall refurbishment to get it to the proper operational state. The system benefits more than 15 faculty members and their graduate students at the University of Waterloo who currently use the fabrication services of the CIRFE clean room. It also benefits other researchers in Canada who access the CIRFE clean room for thin film etching services.