摘要
Focused ion beam (FIB) machining can be used to fabricate gallium arsenide-based devices, which have a surface fnish of several nanometers, and the FIB machining speed and surface fnish can be greatly improved using xenon difuoride (XeF2) gas-assisted etching. Although the refresh time is one of the most important parameters in the gas-assisted etching process, its efect on the machining quality of the surface fnish has rarely been studied. Therefore, in this work, we investigated the efect of the refresh time on the etching process, including the dissociation process of XeF2, the refresh time dependency of the sputter in yield under diferent incident angles, and the surface fnish under diferent refresh times. The results revealed that a selective etching mechanism occurred at diferent refresh times. At an incidence angle of 0°, the sputtering yield increased with the refresh time and reached its maximum value at 500 ms;at an incidence angle of 30°, the sputtering yield reached its minimum value at a refresh time of 500 ms. For surface roughness, the incident angle played a more important role than the refresh time. The surface fnish was slightly better at an incidence angle of 30° than at 0°. In addition, both F and Xe elements were detected in the processed area: Xe elements were evenly distributed throughout the processing area, while F elements tended to accumulate in the whole processing area. The results suggest that the optimum surface can be obtained when a larger refresh time is employed.
基金
The authors gratefully acknowledge the startup funding support by the Dalian University of Technology(DUT)(Award No.82232022,82232043,and DUT22LAB404)。
