James,

Wet etching: try a solution of 30% hydrogen peroxide. You can do an easy test to
determine etch rate etc. Alternatively, solutions with HF will also etch it,
probably at a faster rate (again, easy to determine by doing a few simple
tests). Tune your concentration to get the desired undercut etc.
Dry etching: a mixture of CF4 and O2 at ~100 to 150W in a typical parallel plate
plasma etcher should be quite effective.

Dirk


-----Original Message-----
From: mems-talk-bounces@memsnet.org [mailto:mems-talk-bounces@memsnet.org] On
Behalf Of James Paul Grant
Sent: Monday, February 09, 2009 3:53 AM
To: General MEMS discussion
Subject: Re: [mems-talk] Vanadium Oxide

Hello Dirk,

I've trawled google scholar and there's very little information on wet
or dry etching of vanadium oxide. I looked at one of your papers and
it's not clear if you patterned the VOx using lift-off or etching (be it
dry or wet). In the literature the best VOx films are deposited by
sputtering at > 300oC which obviously precludes lift-off (photoresist
will burn).

I found a couple of papers that say a chloric acid solution was used to
etch vanadium oxide but details are sketchy.

I'm currently awaiting the arrival of my Vanadium sputter target and I
can beging my tests in earnest.

Thanks,

James