Specific Process Knowledge/Etch/RIE (Reactive Ion Etch)

Etching using the dry etch technique RIE (Reactive Ion Etch)

At Danchip we have three RIE's. One (III-V RIE) for etching III-V materials and two (RIE1 and RIE2) for etching silicon based materials (silicon, silicon oxide, sillicon nitride). The hardware of RIE1 and RIE2 is very similar but you cannot count on that identical recipes on RIE1 and RIE2 perform exactly the same. In addition to that the main difference between RIE1 and RIE2 is the cleanness of the two equipment. In rough terms RIE1 is the clean system and the RIE2 is the dirty system. This means that in RIE2 opposed to RIE1 it is allowed have small amounts of metals exposed to the plasma. Look in the manuals for RIE1 and RIE2 to read the details for this difference (look in LabManager).

• Etch of silicon using RIE
• Etch of silicon oxide using RIE
• Etch of silicon nitride using RIE