Study of wet and dry etching processes for antimonide-based photonic ICs

Abstract

We report on the dry etch process parameters and the associated etch rates for target and mask materials, as well as surface roughness in an inductively coupled plasma (ICP) for the (AlGaIn)(AsSb)-compounds. The essential chemistry is based on Cl2 with the addition of N2 for sidewall passivation. The optimized ICP etch process is capable of producing high aspect ratio structures with smooth sidewalls. In situ reflectance monitoring with a 670-nm-wavelength laser was used to enable stop-etching at a material interface with high accuracy. Given the additional need for highly selective wet chemical etchants in the fabrication of GaSb based electronic and optoelectronic devices, an extensive investigation was also performed to examine numerous etch solutions. These etchants were listed with etch rates, selectivities, and surface roughness in order to validate their suitability for intended applications. Despite the frequent use of GaSb or InAsSb materials for etch stop layers against each other, devices where their unique type-II broken bandgap alignment is undesired require new selective wet etchants between GaSb and AlGaAsSb with good selectivity. All of the wet chemical and dry etching processes described here were optimized using an n-type GaSb substrate.