General description

The Reactive Ion Etching (RIE) is a tool dedicated to the removal of selected materials, and is enabled by a dual chemical (ionized gas radicals) and physical (bias-accelerated species, leading to atom collisions or physical bombardment) effect. The machine is less complex compared to an ICP-RIE, and cannot guarantee vertical sidewalls (as required for instance when desiring high aspect ratio structures of high quality factor waveguides), but finds practical exploitation in isotropic etching, for instance in the field of MEMS fabrication

Equipment name and Company: Vision 320 / Advanced Vacuum

Technical specification

• Electrode Size: 12″ (305 mm);  Electrode Material: Aluminum with Graphite Cover
• RF Electrode Bias: 600 W power supply, 13.56 MHz
• Base Pressure: <1x10e-6 Torr
• Pressure Control: Automatic, 0 – 1 Torr
• Process Gas Lines (Digital MFCs): SF6, CHF3, O2, N2
• Control System Software: PLC (XP/Windows 7), with data logging

Available process gases (fluorine chemistry)

• SF6, CHF3, O2 and Ar
• separate mass-flow controller (MFC) for each gas

Pressure control

• pressure controlled separately by an APC valve between the chamber and the turbo-pump

Pumping system

• turbomolecular and mechanical pump in sequence, both purged by nitrogen
• ultimate vacuum: 10-6 Torr

Substrate temperature control

• temerature contro at 20 °C

Other features

• all system functions monitored by a PC-based process controller