Determination of etching parameters for pulsed XeF₂ etching of silicon using chamber pressure data

A technique is presented for determination of the depletion of the etchant, etched depth, and instantaneous etch rate for Si etching with XeF₂ in a pulsed etching system in real time. The only experimental data required is the pressure data collected temporally. Coupling the pressure data with the knowledge of the chemical reactions allows for the determination of the etching parameters of interest. Using this technique, it is revealed that pulsed etching processes are nonlinear, with the initial etch rate being the highest and monotonically decreasing as the etchant is depleted. With the pulsed etching system introduced in this paper, the highest instantaneous etch rate of silicon was recorded to be 19.5 μm min^-1 for an initial pressure of 1.2 Torr for XeF₂. Additionally, the same data is used to determine the rate constant for the reaction of XeF₂ with Si; the reaction is determined to be second order in nature. The effect of varying the exposed surface area of Si as well as the effect that pressure has on the instantaneous etch rate as a function of time is shown applying the same technique. As a proof of concept, an AlN resonator is released using XeF₂ pulses to remove a sacrificial poly-Si layer.