Magnetically confined plasma reactive ion etching of GaAs/AlGaAs/AlAs quantum nanostructures

Abstract

An electron cyclotron resonance reactive ion etching machine has been successfully run under low magnetic field conditions. We call this the magnetically confined plasma condition. Under this condition, a new process using SiCl4 with a small amount of O2 has been developed for etching nanometer scale structures on GaAs, AlGaAs, and AlAs multilayer materials. The effects of the percentage of O2, the rf power, the microwave power, and the flow rate are described. 100 nm quantum dots have been etched on multiple quantum well materials to a depth of about 1 μm. Vertical and smooth sidewalls were obtained on these nanostructures. Poly-methylmethacrylate (PMMA) electron beam resist can be used directly as a dry etch mask, and the selectivity between GaAs and PMMA can be as high as 28:1. Raman spectroscopic studies showed that the process induced no detectable damage to the surface for an etch depth of 130 nm and only very little damage for deeper etching.