Parametric investigations and simulations of ion beam etching and reactive ion etching mechanisms for GaAs compounds

Abstract

This work introduces a comprehensive analytic model of the sputtering mechanism present in ion beam etching and reactive ion etching processes. Our final objective is to correlate the etch rate to the plasma reactor parameters. Experimental verifications for GaAs etching show a good agreement for ion beam etching. In the case of reactive ion etching, the non-perfect agreement is explained by the influence of effects such as flow rate and temperature not taken into account in the theoretical approach. We also present parametric investigations of GaAs etched in SiCl 4 plasma.