At&t Bell Laboratories

American Telephone & Telegraph Co., At&t Bell Laboratories

Bell Telephone Laboratories

Dale E Ibbotson

Daniel L Flamm

Vincent Michael Donnelly, Jr

John A Mucha

Wayne L Johnson

Charles W Tu

Chorng-Ping Chang

Joel M Cook

Silicon nitride regions suitable for applications such as capping layers in integrated circuit fabrication are produced by an advantageous plasma deposition process. This process utilizes a combination of gases, including a silicon-containing gas, a nitrogen-containing gas, a fluorine-containing gas, and a hydrogen-containing gas. Silicon nitride having a low density of defect states and thus having excellent dielectric properties is produced.

Devices and process for producing devices containing silicon nitride

Anisotropic plasma etching is accomplished utilizing a helical resonator operated at relatively low gas pressure. The use of this combination yields an extremely high flux of ionic species with resulting rapid anisotropic etching. A helical resonator in conjunction with suitable precursors is also quite useful for plasma induced deposition.

Processes depending on plasma generation using a helical resonator

A process is described for preparing III-V compound semiconductor devices (e.g., gallium arsenide devices) in which gaseous bromine or chlorine is used as an etch. This etch procedure provides highly uniform etching. High selectivity for etching gallium arsenide in the presence of gallium aluminum arsenide may be obtained by the addition of oxidant gas such as water vapor.

Gaseous etching process

A highly selective--greater than 100 to 1--etch for silicon, tantalum, tantalum silicide and tantalum nitride is achieved by using polyatomic halogen fluorides. The selectivity is achievable without employing plasmas or wet etching.

Etching techniques

Crystallographic etching in III-V semiconductor materials such as GaAs is achieved, for example, by utilizing a suitable halogen containing entity such as chlorine, bromine and iodine. This crystallographic etching yields in one embodiment essentially vertical surfaces of optical quality. Therefore, the procedure is useful in fabricating integrated circuits and in producing optical devices.

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Westfield, NJ, United States of America

Dale E Ibbotson