Etching & Cleaning - Development of

There are various etcher technologies on the market today. These fall under two categories: high pressure systems and low pressure systems. The high pressure sys­tems operate at or greater than 50 mTorr and are used for the production of devices that require greater than half-micron geom­etries. Low pressure devices operate at less than 50 mTorr and are used for the produc­tion of devices that require less than half­micron geometries. The high pressure technologies include conventional planar plasma systems, reactive ion etching (RIE), and magnetically enhanced reactive ion etching (MERIE). The low pressure tech­nologies are electron cyclotron resonance (ECR), helicon wave, inductively or trans­former-coupled plasma, and high-density reflected electron (HRe ).