Hi Nik,

The ICP-RIE systems we have are from Trion Technology. I do anisotropic
etching of silicon and silicon nitride of several microns but not as deep
as 10-100 microns. Yes SF6, C4F8, and O2 should work as well. The bottom
line is still your own recipe for a given material to be etched and the
system you use. I am sure you can find other regimes of parameters with
your process gases that doesn't work. Same thing applies to that paper
I referred to. The science is just some guiding principles behind the
process. You can't plug in some process parameters and have a "magic"
formula to calculate the etch rate, geometrical etch profile, etc. What we
can expect from all these papers is that *at least* the presented process
recipe works in their subject under study. You can start your process
development based on that recipe, at least better than random guesses.

Regards,

Isaac


On Tue, 12 Sep 2006, Nicolas Duarte wrote:

> That brings up a good point.  Chan, what type of DRIE system do you
> have?  Is it an ICP-RIE system or of another type (for example,
> parallel plate).
>
> I also know it is possible to do DRIE without Ar as our system just
> uses SF6, C4F8, and O2, so knowing your species might help people
> give further suggestions.