Smooth reactive ion etching of GaAs using a hydrogen plasma pretreatment
- Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87185 (United States)
- AT T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey 07974 (United States)
Extremely smooth GaAs surfaces are attained after SiCl[sub 4] reactive ion etching by preparing the surface before etching with hydrogen plasma exposure to selectively remove the native surface oxides. Using this hydrogen plasma pretreatment, the surface morphology after etching is equivalent to that of the original surface since the etching proceeds uniformly through the GaAs without micromasking effects from a nonuniform surface oxide. The beneficial effects of the hydrogen plasma processing are observed in two different reactors and are found to be independent of the platen temperature during etching. Using atomic force microscopy we find an optimized hydrogen plasma process produces an etched surface morphology with an average surface roughness of 0.9--1.5 nm, as compared to the surface roughness of 0.6 nm before etching or as great as 11.8 nm after etching without the hydrogen plasma pretreatment.
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC04-94AL85000
- OSTI ID:
- 6608345
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology. B, Microelectronics Processing and Phenomena; (United States), Vol. 13:1; ISSN 0734-211X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
GALLIUM ARSENIDES
ETCHING
CHEMICAL REACTIONS
HYDROGEN
PLASMA
ROUGHNESS
SILICON CHLORIDES
TEMPERATURE DEPENDENCE
TEMPERATURE RANGE 0065-0273 K
TEMPERATURE RANGE 0273-0400 K
ARSENIC COMPOUNDS
ARSENIDES
CHLORIDES
CHLORINE COMPOUNDS
ELEMENTS
GALLIUM COMPOUNDS
HALIDES
HALOGEN COMPOUNDS
NONMETALS
PNICTIDES
SILICON COMPOUNDS
SILICON HALIDES
SURFACE FINISHING
SURFACE PROPERTIES
TEMPERATURE RANGE
360601* - Other Materials- Preparation & Manufacture