What is ion etching process?

Reactive ion etching (RIE) is a type of plasma etch technology used in specialty semiconductor markets for device manufacturing. Chemically reactive species (ions) are accelerated toward the substrate (usually a silicon wafer), to remove a specific deposited material.

What is difference between RIE and ICP?

The key differentiation between ICP RIE and RIE is the separate ICP RF power source connected to the cathode that generates DC bias and attracts ions to the wafer. Thus, with ICP RIE technology it is possible to decouple ion current and ion energy applied to the wafer, enlarging the process window.

What is ion milling etching?

Ion Milling is a physical etching technique whereby the ions of an inert gas (typically Ar) are accelerated from a wide beam ion source into the surface of a substrate (or coated substrate) in vacuum in order to remove material to some desired depth or underlayer.

How does ion beam sputtering work?

Ion Beam Sputtering (IBS), also called Ion Beam Deposition (IBD), is a thin film deposition process that uses an ion source to deposit or sputter a target material (metal or dielectric) onto a substrate to create either a metallic or dielectric film.

How does an ion beam work?

A focused ion beam (FIB) instrument is almost identical to a SEM, but uses a beam of ions rather than electrons. The focused ion beam can directly modify or “mill” the specimen surface, via the sputtering process, and this milling can be controlled with nanometer precision.

How does ion mill work?

During the ion milling process, a high-energy ion gun is used to bombard the top surface of the sample. The high energy ions interact with the loosely bounded surface atoms in the top amorphous layer of the sample under investigation and remove them to reveal an atomic level clean surface.

What are the different types of etching?

In general, there are two classes of etching processes:

• Wet etching where the material is dissolved when immersed in a chemical solution.
• Dry etching where the material is sputtered or dissolved using reactive ions or a vapor phase etchant.