Plasma processing is one of the key steps for the fabrication of many advanced electronic and photonic devices, such as DRAM, heterojunction bipolar transistors, lasers, LEDs, micro-magnetic drives, and planar lightwave circuits. High density plasma technologies are becoming popular for pattern transfer and chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of electronic and dielectric materials. Inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etching results have shown that it is possible to achieve excellent process recipes for compound semiconductors. ICP-PECVD also provided great advantages for low-temperature (<150°C) SiNx deposition technology. These data encouraged an expansion of the application of high density plasma processing for manufacturing of new opto-electronic devices. This paper will report recent developments of SiNx deposition and GaAs etching results in inductively coupled plasma systems.

Keywords: Plasma Processing, PECVD, Dry etching, SiNx, GaAs, inductively coupled plasma