Deep anisotropic etching of silicon

Abstract

We are interested in etching very deep anisotropic trenches (∼100 μm) with high aspect ratios (depth/width) (∼20–50) and high etch rates (∼5 μm/min). A high density plasma helicon reactor using SF6/O2 chemistry and a cryogenic chuck has been used for etching very narrow trenches from 1.2 to 10 μm wide on n-type Si wafers with a SiO2 mask. The first results show significant features that demonstrate the feasibility of this method. Two-micron-wide trenches have been etched to a depth of 80 μm at an average etch rate of 2.7 μm/min. The resulting profiles are highly anisotropic and selectivity of Si/SiO2 is remarkably high (>500).