Chemical Etching of Group III - V Semiconductors

Chemical etching is basically a process used to selectively remove controlled amounts of material from the original substrate. The etch depth can be designed to be just tens of angstroms or up to a few hundred angstroms.

The etching process is one of the important stages in the fabrication of micro electronics devices. Errors at this stage will severely impair performance of these devices.

Due to the present diadvantages of dry etching, wet chemical etching will still be useful for some time. it is infact one of the standard technique for the processing of Integral Circuits (Ics).

This article reviews the chemical etchants used for the reatment of GaAs and others III - V. Semiconductors, the factors involved in their mechanism and the many potential pitfalls, arwillan detects associated with them.

The article should present an understandable account for the non-specialist reaser yet it does offer a useful material and information for the specialists readers an well.