Magnetron reactive ion etching of GaAs: Residual damage study

Residual damage of GaAs samples etched in a magnetron reactive ion etcher has been studied. Aligned yields from ion channeling measurements show that the amount of dechanneling in the etched samples is virtually identical to that of an unetched control sample, which indicates low concentration of disorder. Transmission electron microscopy reveals that the surface morphology of etched samples is extremely good with defects in the form of small dislocation loops of 20–40 Å diam. It is shown that magnetron reactive ion etching is capable of yielding high etch rates with little surface damage.