Inductively coupled plasma–reactive ion etching of c- and a-plane AlGaN over the entire Al composition range: Effect of BCl3 pretreatment in Cl2/Ar plasma chemistry

Inductively coupled plasma (ICP)–reactive ion etching (RIE) patterning is a standard processing step for UV and optical photonic devices based on III-nitride materials. There is little research on ICP-RIE of high Al-content AlGaN alloys and for nonpolar nitride orientations. The authors present a comprehensive study of the ICP-RIE of c- and a-plane AlGaN in Cl2/Ar plasma over the entire Al composition range. The authors find that the etch rate decreases in general with increasing Al content, with different behavior for c- and a-plane AlGaN. They also study the effect of BCl3 deoxidizing plasma pretreatment. An ICP deoxidizing BCl3 plasma with the addition of argon is more efficient in removal of surface oxides from AlxGa1−xN than RIE alone. These experiments show that AlxGa1−xN etching is affected by the higher binding energy of AlN and the higher affinity of oxygen to aluminum compared to gallium, with oxides on a-plane AlGaN more difficult to etch as compared to oxides on c-plane AlGaN, specifically for high Al composition materials. The authors achieve reasonably high etch rate (∼350 nm/min) for high Al-content materials with a smooth surface morphology at a low DC bias of ∼−45 VDC.