• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2003.07b
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• pp.868-871
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• 2003

In recent years, silicon carbide has emerged as an important material for MEMS application. In order to fabricate an SiC film based MEMS structure by using chemical etching method, high operating temperature is required due to high chemical stability. Therefore, dry etching using plasma is the best solution. SiC film was deposited by thermal CVD at the temperature of $1000^{\circ}C$ and pressure of 10 torr. SiC was dry etched with a reactive ion etching (RIE) system, using $SF_6/O_2$ and $CF_4/O_2$ gas mixture. Etch rate have been investigated as a function of oxygen concentration in the gas mixture, RF power, and working pressure. Etch rate was measured by surface profiler and FE-SEM. $SF_6/O_2$ gas mixture has been shown high etch rate than $CF_4/O_2$ gas mixture. Maximum etch rate appeared at 450W of RF power. $O_2$ dilute mixtures resulted in an increasing of etch rate up to 40%, and the superior anisotropic cross section was observed.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.299-304
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• 2004

In recent years, silicon carbide has emerged as an important material for MEMS application. In order to fabricate an SiC film based MEMS structure by using chemical etching method, high operating temperature is required due to high chemical stability Therefore, dry etching using plasma is the best solution. SiC film was deposited by thermal CVD at the temperature of 100$0^{\circ}C$ and pressure of 10 torr. SiC was dry etched with a reactive ion etching (RIE) system, using SF$_{6}$/O$_2$ and CF$_4$/O$_2$ gas mixture. Etch rate has been investigated as a function of oxygen concentration in the gas mixture, rf power, working pressure and gas flow rate. Etch rate was measured by surface profiler and FE-SEM. SF$_{6}$/O$_2$ gas mixture showed higher etch rate than CF$_4$/O$_2$ gas mixture. Maximum etch rate appeared at RF Power of 450W. $O_2$ dilute mixtures resulted in an increasing of etch rate up to 40％, and the superior anisotropic cross section was observe

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.39 no.6
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• pp.570-575
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• 2002

The present tendency of electrical and electronics is concentrated on MEMS devices for advantage of miniaturization, intergration, low electric power and low cost. Therefore it is essential that high aspect ratio and high etch rate by HDP technology development, so that silicon deep trench etching reactions was studied by ICP equipment. Deep trench etching of silicon was investigated as function of platen power, etch step time of etch/passivation cycle time and SF$\_$6/:C$_4$F$\_$8/ flow rate. Their effects on etch profile, scallops, etch rate, uniformity and selectivity were also studied.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.14 no.5
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• pp.220-225
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• 2004

Four different Fluorine-based gases ($SF_6/,NF_3, PF_5,\; and \; BF_3$) were examined for high rate Inductively Coupled Plasma etching of Si. Etch rates up to ~8$\mu\textrm{m}$/min were achieved with pure $SF_6$ discharges at high source power (1500 W) and pressure (35 mTorr). A direct comparison of the four feedstock gases under the same plasma conditions showed the Si etch rate to increase in the order $BF_3$ < $NF_3$< $PF_5$ < $SF_6$. This is in good correlation with the average bond energies of the gases, except for $NF_3$, which is the least strongly bound. Optical emission spectroscopy showed that the ICP source efficiently dissociated $NF_3$, but the etched Si surface morphologies were significantly worse with this gas than with the other 3 gases.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 1999.07a
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• pp.65-65
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• 1999

Dry etching technique provides more easy controllability on the etch profile such as anisotropic etching than wet etching process and the results of lots of researches on the characterization of various plasmas or ion beams for semiconductor etching have been reported. Chlorine-based plasmas or chlorine ion beam have been often used to etch several semiconductor materials, in particular Si-based materials. We have studied the effect of He flow rate on the Si and SiO2 dry etching using chlorine-based plasma. Experiments were performed using reactive ion etching system. RF power was 300W. Cl2 gas flow rate was fixed at 58.6 sccm, and the He flow rate was varied from 0 to 120 sccm. Fig. 1 presents the etch depth of si layer versus the etching time at various He flow rate. In case of low He flow rate, the etch rate was measured to be negligible for both Si and SiO2. As the He flow increases over 30% of the total inlet gas flow, the plasma state becomes stable and the etch rate starts to increase. In high Ge flow rate (over 60%), the relation between the etch depth and the time was observed to be nearly linear. Fig. 2 presents the variation of the etch rate depending on the He flow rate. The etch rate increases linearly with He flow rate. The results of this preliminary study show that Cl2/He mixture plasma is good candidate for the controllable si dry etching.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1997.11a
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• pp.276-278
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• 1997

The reliable etching process is one of the essential steps in fabricating GaN based-device. High etch rate is needed to obtain a deeply etched structure and perfect anisotropic etched facet is needed to obtain lasing profile. In the research, therefore, we had proposed a planar inductively coupled plasma etcher (Planar ICP Etcher) as a high density plasma source, and studied the etching mechanism using the $CH_4/H_2$/Ar gas mixture. Dry etching characteristics such as etch rate, anisotropic etching profile and so on, for the III-V nitride layers were investigated using Planar ICP Etcher, based on the plasma characteristic as a variation of plasma process parameters.

• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• v.2 no.5
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• pp.238-242
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• 2003

The characteristics of Ru etching using $O_2/Cl_2$ plasmas were investigated by employing inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etcher. The changes of Ru etch rate, Ru to $SiO_2$ etch selectivity and Ru electrode etching slope with the gas flow ratio, bias power, total gas flow rate, and source power were scrutinized. A high etching slope (${\sim}86^{\circ}$) and a smooth surface after etching was attained using $O_2/Cl_2$ inductively coupled plasma.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.10-14
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• 2015

This paper reports the results of a study on the optimization of the etching profile, which is an important factor in deep-reactive-ion etching (DRIE), i.e., dry etching. Dry etching is the key processing step necessary for the development of the Internet of Things (IoT) and various microelectromechanical sensors (MEMS). Large-area etching (open area > 20%) under a high-frequency (HF) condition with nonoptimized processing parameters results in damage to the etched sidewall. Therefore, in this study, optimization was performed under a low-frequency (LF) condition. The HF method, which is typically used for through-silicon via (TSV) technology, applies a high etch rate and cannot be easily adapted to processes sensitive to sidewall damage. The optimal etching profile was determined by controlling various parameters for the DRIE of a large Si wafer area (open area > 20%). The optimal processing condition was derived after establishing the correlations of etch rate, uniformity, and sidewall damage on a 6-in Si wafer to the parameters of coil power, run pressure, platen power for passivation etching, and $SF_6$ gas flow rate. The processing-parameter-dependent results of the experiments performed for optimization of the etching profile in terms of etch rate, uniformity, and sidewall damage in the case of large Si area etching can be summarized as follows. When LF is applied, the platen power, coil power, and $SF_6$ should be low, whereas the run pressure has little effect on the etching performance. Under the optimal LF condition of 380 Hz, the platen power, coil power, and $SF_6$ were set at 115W, 3500W, and 700 sccm, respectively. In addition, the aforementioned standard recipe was applied as follows: run pressure of 4 Pa, $C_4F_8$ content of 400 sccm, and a gas exchange interval of $SF_6/C_4F_8=2s/3s$.

• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.215-218
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• 2007

In this paper, amorphous semiconductor and insulator thin film are etched using reactive ion etcher. At that time, we experiment in various RIE conditions (chamber pressure, gas flow rate, rf power, temperature) that have effects on quality of thin film. The using gases are $CF_4,\;CF_4+O_2,\;CCl_2F_2,\;CHF_3$ gases. The etching of a-Si:H thin film use $CF_4,\;CF_4+O_2$ gases and the etching of $a-SiO_2,\;a-SiN_x$ thin film use $CCl_2F_2,\;CHF_3$ gases. The $CCl_2F_2$ gas is particularly excellent because the selectivity of between a-Si:H thin film and $a-SiN_x$ thin film is 6:1. We made precise condition on dry etching with uniformity of 5%. If this dry etching condition is used, that process can acquire high yield and can cut down process cost.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics A
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• v.30A no.1
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• pp.16-22
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• 1993

A via-hole process for reproducible and reliable GaAs MMIC fabrication is described. The via-hole etching process consists of two step dry etching. During the first etching step a BC $I_{3}$/C $I_{2}$/Ar gas mixure is used to achieve high etch rate and small lateral etching. In the second etching step. CC $L_{2}$ $F_{2}$ gas is used to achieve selective etching of the GaAs substrate with respect to the front side metal layer. Via holes are formed from the backside of a 100$\mu$m thick GaAs substrate that has been evaporated initially with 500.angs. thick chromium and subsequently a 2000.angs. thick gold layer. The fabricated via holes are electroplated with gold (~20$\mu$m thick) to form via connections. The results show that established via-hole process is satisfactory for GaAs MMIC fabrication.