Anisotropic Etching of InP and InGaAs by Using an Inductively Coupled Plasma in Cl2/N2 and Cl2/Ar Mixtures at Low Bias Power

X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis of the effect of temperature upon surface composition of InP etched in Cl2-based inductively coupled plasma

“…Several authors have identified PN x compounds on the InP surface when adding N 2 to the feed gas for various etching conditions, including CH 4 -H 2 -N 2 reactive ion beam etching, 37 Cl 2 -N 2 electron cyclotron resonance etching, 19 or Cl 2 -N 2 ICP etching. 17 These results support the idea of the high stability of solid PN x compounds on InP. From such reports and from our experimental results, we devise a twofold effect of nitrogen.…”

“…I, a high surface temperature is required due to the lower volatility of the InCl x species. [13][14][15][16][17] This can be inferred from thermodynamics, as illustrated in Fig. 1 where the vapor pressure values calculated for the most volatile reaction products are reported as a function of the temperature.…”

“…Vicknesh and Raman. 16 and Bae et al 17 used ex-situ XPS to characterize the surface of InP samples etched with HBr/Ar and Cl 2 /Ar inductively coupled plasmas, respectively, and reported the presence of InBr x and InCl x products in the In 3d core level spectrum, as well as a significant reduction of peak intensity in the P 2p core level spectrum. On the other hand, some ex-situ XPS surface analysis conducted for Cl 2 -based capacitively coupled reactive ion etching (CCP-RIE) 18 and various electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) or ICP etching chemistries including Cl 2 , 19,20 Cl 2 /CH 4 /H 2 , 20 or HBr/O 2 9 gas mixtures have shown that a P-rich surface can also be obtained, but the origin of P enrichment was not identified.…”

Nanoscale Nucleation and Growth of Non-Stoichiometric V-Shaped InP Defect in Heterogeneous InGaAsP/InP Array

“…During the RIE etching, the chlorine-based etching of BCl 3 reacted with the InP to form chlorine-based etch products such as PCl x . Those chlorine-based etch products have very high volatility that would lead to the preferential loss of phosphorus (Bae et al, 2007). As a result, the phosphorus-deficient region was likely to form along the sidewall and bottom of the groove after the RIE etching, as illustrated in Figure 7.…”

Study of Inductively Coupled Plasma Etching of ZnS Materials

“…(such as C2H6/H2 or CH4/H2) [4] [5]. The etching rate up to several hundred nm/min with the first type of gas etching II-VI compound semiconductor material [6] [7], The faster etching rate is not conducive to the manufacture of nano-scale fine structures, and the halogen elements are corrosive and toxic and have a certain impact on the environment. The second type of gas is neither toxic nor corrosive.…”