Electron Cyclotron Resonance-Reactive Ion Etching of III-V Semiconductors by Cyclic Injection of CH4/H2/Ar and O2 with Constant Ar Flow

Abstract

Electron cyclotron resonance-reactive ion etching (ECR-RIE) is very useful for fabricating semiconductor photonic devices and integrated circuits (PICs). The mixture gas of CH4/H2 is used for etching III-V semiconductors, but the carbon polymer film deposited on the surface during the etching process presents some problems. Thus, the polymer film must be ashed off using an O2 plasma. We introduced the cyclic injection of CH4/H2/Ar and O2 to ECR-RIE, and demonstrated that it was very useful for etching of InP. However, compound semiconductors containing Al (e.g., AlGaAs and InAlAs) react with oxygen and an alumina layer is formed, which cannot be etched by CH4/H2 etching. Therefore, we used a new cyclic etching process with constant Ar flow in the chamber to remove this alumina layer by Ar ion etching, and obtained good results for etching rate and surface morphology for the compound semiconductors containing Al. We also proposed a suitable combination of three cyclic etching procedures (continuous etching, cyclic etching without constant Ar flow and cyclic etching with constant Ar flow) for etching the multilayer heterostructure of III-V semiconductors including InP and/or compound semiconductors containing Al.