A Review of Dry Etching of GaN and Related Materials

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A Review of Dry Etching of GaN and Related Materials S.J. Pearton, R. J. Shul and Fan Ren MRS Internet Journal of Nitride Semiconductor Research / Volume 5 / Issue 01 / January 2000 DOI: 10.1557/S1092578300000119, Published online: 13 June 2014

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1092578300000119 How to cite this article: S.J. Pearton, R. J. Shul and Fan Ren (2000). A Review of Dry Etching of GaN and Related Materials . MRS Internet Journal of Nitride Semiconductor Research, 5, pp e11 doi:10.1557/S1092578300000119 Request Permissions : Click here

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MRS

Internet Journal Nitride Semiconductor Research

A Review of Dry Etching of GaN and Related Materials S.J. Pearton1, R. J. Shul2 and Fan Ren 3 1Department

of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Florida, National Laboratories/New Mexico, 3Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Florida, 2Sandia

(Received Wednesday, September 20, 2000; accepted Thursday, November 16, 2000)

The characteristics of dry etching of the AlGaInN materials system in different reactor types and plasma chemistries are reviewed, along with the depth and thermal stability of etch-induced damage. The application to device processing for both electronics and photonics is also discussed.

1

Introduction

GaN and related alloys are finding application for fabrication of blue/green/UV emitters (light-emitting diodes and lasers) and high temperature, high power electronic devices [1] [2] [3] [4]. The emitter technology is relatively mature, with light-emitting diodes being commercially available since 1994 and blue laser diodes also available from Nichia Chemical Industries. Electronic devices such as heterostructure field effect transistors (FETs), heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs), metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors (MOSFETs) and diode rectifiers have all been realized in the AlGaInN system, with very promising high temperature (>300°C) and high voltage performance. The applications for the emitter devices lies in full color displays, optical data storage, white-light sources and covert communications, while the electronic devices are suited for high power switches and microwave power generation. Due to limited wet chemical etch results for the group-III nitrides, a significant amount of effort has been devoted to the development of dry etch processing [5] [6]. Dry etch development was initially focused on mesa structures where high etch rates, anisotropic profiles, smooth sidewalls and equirate etching of dissimilar materials were required. For example, commercially available LEDs and laser facets for GaN-based laser diodes were patterned using reactive ion etch (RIE). However, as interest in high power, high temperature electronics increased, etch requirements expanded