Mesa Etching

This page outlines our effort to improve the III-V mesa etch.

Processing

E-Phi Dev2 SOA mesa definition process:

Process follower

Process flow and SEM

Processing completed as of July 7/1/12. See Mike with questions or issues.

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Process follower (Doc)

The mask file is identical to the mesa layer of the taper test mask.

Data

SEMs of mesa

As shown in the above SEMs, etching the SiN layer in ICP, results in smoother sidewalls after the InP etch (when compared to the standard process which uses RIE3). The next step is to compare the sidewalls of this optimized etch process to the InP etch from the Blumenthal and Coldren groups.