Dry etching of crystalline quartz in a planar plasma reactor

Abstract

The etching of crystalline quartz was carried out in a planar plasma reactor with radial gas flow in both the reactive ion etching and the plasma etching modes. The variation in the etching rate with parameters such as the pressure, the gas flow rate and the temperature was determined. It was established that the orientation of the quartz samples does not influence the etching rate. The addition of O 2 leads to an increased etching rate only in plasma etching. In reactive ion etching the etching rate is unaffected. In all the experiments amorphous SiO 2 thermally grown on silicon was etched simultaneously. A comparison of the results indicates that the nature of the etching process for crystalline quartz is the same as that for thermal SiO 2.