Dry Etching: Techniques and Equipment

This lecture covers various dry etching techniques for silicon, including deep dry etching using SF6 and C4F8 chemistries, pulsed etching with the Bosch process, and XeF2 gas etching without a plasma. It also discusses characteristic parameters of etching profiles, microtrenching effects, and aspect ratio dependent etching. The equipment used for dry etching, such as RF plasma sources, vacuum chambers, and HF vapor phase etchers, is explained in detail, along with their functionalities. Additionally, the lecture explores HF vapor phase etching of SiO2 and sacrificial SiO2 layers, highlighting their importance in MEMS fabrication.