Plasma and gaseous etching of III-V compounds.

Devices fabricated from III-V compound materials have become increasingly important to the communications and electronics industry. As design rules shrink to take advantage of the performance of III-V devices and as circuit integration approaches the sophistication of silicon technology, dry etching of these materials must replace many of the wet chemical etching techniques currently used to form microrelief structures. The high fidelity, resolution and control achieved with dry etching processes are critical for the realization of many devices. This paper will discuss the fundamental research and mechanistic understanding, the processing tools and their chemistry, recent device applications, and the current limitations associated with drying etch processing of III-V compound materials.