Studies on chemical wet etching of GaN

GaN계 질화합물 반도체의 습식식각 연구

In this paper, the etching studies for n-GaN were carried out using the wet chemical, the photo-enhanced-chemical, and the electro-chemical etching methods. The experimental results show that n-GaN is etched in diluted NaOH solution at room temperture and the etched thickness of NaOH and electron concentrations. Te etching rate of n-GaN samples with n.simeq.1*10$^{19}$ cm$^{-3}$ were used to compare the photo-enhanced-chemical etching with the electrochemical etching methods. The removed thickness was 680.angs./25min by the electrochemical etching methods. The removed thickness was 680 .angs./25min by the electrochemical etching method ad 784.angs./25min by the photoenhanced-chemical etching method. The patterns are 100.mu.m*100.mu.m rectangulars covered with SiO$_{2}$film. It is shown that the profile of etched side-wall of the pattern is vertical without dependance of the n-GaN orientations.