AVS 47th International Symposium
    Photonics Tuesday Sessions
       Session PH-TuP

Paper PH-TuP7
Study of the GaAs etching with the Electron Cyclotron Resonance Source Plasmas

Tuesday, October 3, 2000, 5:30 pm, Room Exhibit Hall C & D

Session: Poster Session
Presenter: P. Kumar, Central Scientific Instruments Organisation, India
Authors: P. Kumar, Central Scientific Instruments Organisation, India
S.K. Angra, Central Scientific Instruments Organisation, India
L.M. Bharadwaj, Central Scientific Instruments Organisation, India
R.P. Bajpai, Central Scientific Instruments Organisation, India
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The III-V materials are precisely used for the fabrication of the Optoelectonics devices as LEDs, laser diodes and high speed electronics devices. The devices fabrication process in the line is mainly used 13.56 MHz RIE system with the different gases combinations such as BCl@sub3@,Cl@sub2@ , hydro carbon and further activated them using the Ar ions into it. The reactive ion beam etching combined with the Electron Cyclotron Resonance discharge plasma (ECR-RIBE) and chemically assisted ECR plasma etching is especially useful , because of its highly directional and causes low damage. In this article, we had investigated the of GaAs etching using the Electron Cyclotron Resonance Cl@sub2@ plasma operated at 2.45 GHZ. Also the first time the Chemically assisted ECR plasma etching of the GaAs was investigated with the combination of the Ar/I@sub2@. The optimization of the system for the etching of GaAs was carried out with the numerous different parameters such as flow rates of the gases such as chlorine and added up Ar into cholrine, bias to the stage or substrate in the range of 15to 100 volt dc bias, partial pressure ranging from 0.1 mTorr to 1 mTorr of the process chamber, variation of the space between stage to the exit windows of the plasma source and measurements of uniformity of process over the 2 to 6 inches were studies. The Argon plasma is exposed to the substrate while Iodine is directly implemented to the substrate for the chemically assisted process. The results are qualitatively put into accordance with the observed reactive species of the plasma using the optical emission spectroscopy and also with the total plasma density calculated using Langmuir probe measurements of the plasmas. The etching uniformity of the substrate of 2, 3, 4 and 6 inches was performed and that is matched with the plasma ion density uniformity measurements and attempts were put forward to improve the uniformity by further confinement of the plasma using the magnetic field and also putting the biasing to the substrate.