Abstract

After a short introduction of the Australian National Fabrication Facility ACT Node and its capabilities, this talk will focus on general aspects of reactive ion etching (RIE) technique will be described such as anisotropy, loading effect, lag effect, RIE chemistries and micro-masking followed by a brief overview of etching dielectrics (SiO_x, SiN_x) and crystalline Si. The second part of the paper is dedicated to etching III-V compound semiconductors where, based on RIE results of GaN material, a simple and practical thermodynamic approach is exposed explaining the criteria as to how to select the best chemistry for etching a specific material and to explain the GaN etching results. Finally, a comprehensive study of etching InP-based materials using various chemistries will be discussed as well their various photonic applications.

Reference: http://iopscience.iop.org/0022-3727/47/23/233501/

About the speaker

Fouad Karouta has a chemistry degree from Lebanese University in Beirut, accomplished in 1986 his PhD in Montpellier University (France) on epitaxy and LEDs of InGaAsSb structures. He joined Eindhoven University of Technology in The Netherlands at the Opto-electronic Devices Section of the Department of Electrical Engineering, as assistant professor (1987) and associate professor (2000) till early 2009 before joining ANU as the ANFF ACT Node Manager. Fouad has vast experience in managing research facilities and has been involved with research in III-V compound semiconductors (GaAs, InP, GaN) for optoelectronic and microelectronic applications for more than 30 years and has published and co-authored a large number of papers on the subject.