AVS 53rd International Symposium
    Plasma Science and Technology Thursday Sessions
       Session PS1-ThA

Paper PS1-ThA8
Atomic Layer Etching of III-V compounds using a Low Angle Forward Reflected Neutral Beam

Thursday, November 16, 2006, 4:20 pm, Room 2009

Session: Plasma Processing for High-K/III-V’s and Smart Materials
Presenter: S.D. Park, Sungkyunkwan University, Korea
Authors: S.D. Park, Sungkyunkwan University, Korea
C.K. Oh, Sungkyunkwan University, Korea
J.W. Bae, Sungkyunkwan University, Korea
G.Y. Yeom, Sungkyunkwan University, Korea
Correspondent: Click to Email
III-V compounds are currently investigated for various electronic and optical devices, due to high electron mobility and high useful temperature range. Therefore, a few researchers have investigated on the dry etching of III-V compounds using halogen-based reactive-ion-etching (RIE). However, these conventional RIE processes lead to physically damage to the surface of the devices, such as creation of surface defect including structural disruption, intermixing layer or stoichiometry modification and the increment of surface roughness, due to the use of energetic reactive ions to achieve vertical etch profiles. Among those dry processes, atomic layer etching (ALET) can be assigned as the most possible method to realize atomic scale etch-rate controllability of III-V compounds without physically damaging to the surface of III-V compounds. In this study, the ALET of III-V compounds were carried out using a sequential Cl@sub 2@ adsorption and a Ne neutral beam irradiation to the surface. By supplying Cl@sub 2@ and Ne neutrals higher than critical doses, the exactly same etch depth per cycle corresponding to one atomic layer per cycle could be obtained by a self-limited etching mechanism. The etched step height was measured using a step profilometer. The measured step height was divided by the total number of ALET cycles to yield the etch rate per cycle. An atomic force microscope (AFM) was used to measure the surface roughness. Also, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) was utilized to analyze the change of composition of III-V compounds.