High Density Inductively Coupled Plasma Etching of III-V Semiconductors in BCI3Ne Chemistry

A BCl$_3$/Ne plasma chemistry was used to etch Ga-based (GaAs, AIGaAs, GaSb) and In-based (InGaP, InP, InAs and InGaAsP) compound semiconductors in a Planar Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) reactor. The addition of the Ne instead of Ar can minimize electrical and optical damage during dry etching of III-V semiconductors due to its light mass compared to that of Ar All of the materials exhibited a maximum etch rate at BCl$_3$ to Ne ratios of 0.25-0.5. Under all conditions, the Ga-based materials etched at significantly higher rates than the In-based materials, due to relatively high volatilities of their trichloride etch products (boiling point CaCl$_3$ : 201 $^{\circ}C$, AsCl$_3$ : 130 $^{\circ}C$, PCl$_3$: 76 $^{\circ}C$) compared to InCl$_3$ (boiling point : 600 $^{\circ}C$). We obtained low root-mean-square(RMS) roughness of the etched sulfate of both AIGaAs and GaAs, which is quite comparable to the unetched control samples. Excellent etch anisotropy ( > 85$^{\circ}$) of the GaAs and AIGaAs in our PICP BCl$_3$/Ne etching relies on some degree of sidewall passivation by redeposition of etch products and photoresist from the mask. However, the surfaces of In-based materials are somewhat degraded during the BCl$_3$/Ne etching due to the low volatility of InCl$_{x}$./.

BCI3Ne 혼합가스를 이용한 III-V 반도체의 고밀도 유도결합 플라즈마 식각