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Oxford Plama Etching Media Center
General Materials
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Aluminum Oxide
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From a quick search, seems to be typically etched in high density plasmas with a chlorine based chemistry - JCW The ETCH Mechanism for Al2O3 in Fluorine and Chlorine Based RF Dry Etch Plasmas Temperature dependence on dry etching of Al2O3 thin films in BCl3/Cl2/Ar plasma Dry Etching of Al2O3 Thin Films in O2/BCl3/Ar Inductively Coupled Plasma |
General - Will it etch
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- Will it etch?
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Materials can generally be etched in the RIEs as long as they form volatile byproducts, or products for which the vapor pressure (at the temperature of the etch) is higher than the pressure of the chamber. Etching is very complicated and this will be massive oversimplification...but generally volatile byproducts can be determined from literature, or as a fallback, the CRC Handbook of Chemistry and Physics Online, (4) Properties of the Elements & Inorganics, Physical Constants of Inorganic Compounds: https://hbcp.chemnetbase.com/faces/documents/04_02/04_02_0001.xhtml. From there, click "Go to Interactive Table", and find products that may be formed (i.e. chloride, fluorides, oxides, depending on the gasses). A compound is deemed volatile if it has a boiling point at a reasonable temperature range for the temperature and pressure of the system. Note that at lower pressures, boiling points decrease, so these are just a good staring point reference. As a VERY general rule of thumb, anything with a boiling point (tbp) < 185 C will be volatile in the ICP RIEs. As an example, aluminum chloride is volatile, and aluminum fluoride and aluminum are not.
Neither Copper chloride or copper fluoride is volatile, which is why it is not allowed in any chamber:
Byproducts of silicon are very volatile:
Many times different fluorides/chlorides of the same material will have drastically different boiling points. It's important to research which will be formed in the plasma. Titanium is a good example of this, with TiCl2 and TiCl3 being non-volatile, and TiCl4 being volatile:
 non-volatile, and TiCl4 being volatile:
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Specific Materials
Aluminum Oxide
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From a quick search, seems to be typically etched in high density plasmas with a chlorine based chemistry - JCW The ETCH Mechanism for Al2O3 in Fluorine and Chlorine Based RF Dry Etch Plasmas Temperature dependence on dry etching of Al2O3 thin films in BCl3/Cl2/Ar plasma Dry Etching of Al2O3 Thin Films in O2/BCl3/Ar Inductively Coupled Plasma |
Mounting
Small samples may be mounted to carrier wafers with Crystalbond 555 HMP. More info here: A09_18.pdf and 821-1-2-3-4-6-TN.pdf
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