AVS 51st International Symposium
    Semiconductors Tuesday Sessions
       Session SC-TuP

Paper SC-TuP5
Etch Characteristics of Sapphire using Inductively Coupled Plasmas

Tuesday, November 16, 2004, 4:00 pm, Room Exhibit Hall B

Session: Poster Session
Presenter: Y.J. Sung, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, South Korea
Authors: Y.J. Sung, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, South Korea
T. Jang, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, South Korea
K.K. Choi, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, South Korea
S.H. Chae, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, South Korea
Y.H. Kim, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, South Korea
J.S. Kwak, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, South Korea
O.H. Nam, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, South Korea
Y. Park, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, South Korea
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Sapphire has been widely used as a substrate for epitaxial growth of GaN-based optoelectronic devices due to its high chemical and thermal stability. Therefore it is essential to understand the dry etching technique in order to fabricate advanced optoelectronic devices. Recently, researches on the various etching of sapphire such as inductively coupled plasma etching, ion beam etching, chemical wet etching after ion implantation, reactive ion etching, etc. have been carried out and have focused on achievement of high etch rates and high selectivity over etch mask. In case of GaN-based laser diodes and light emitting diodes, various sapphire etching methods have been applied to techniques such as epitaxial lateral overgrowth(ELO) and lateral epitaxial patterned sapphire substrates(LEPS) to reduce dislocation density in GaN layer. However, until now there have been only a few works on the etching of sapphire and its properties. In this study, inductively coupled plasmas were used to etch sapphire. The effects of etch parameters such as gas combination of BCl@sub3@/ Cl@sub2@ and BCl@sub3@/Cl@sub2@/Ar, inductive power (400- 800Watts), bias voltage (-100--300Volts), and operational pressure (3-30mTorr) on the etch characteristics such as etch selectivity and etch properties of sapphire were investigated. To investigate the etch mechanism of sapphire, optical emissions from the plasmas during the etch process were monitored in situ and the sapphire surface composition after the etching was observed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.