Selective electrochemical etching of epitaxial aluminum nitride thin film
- Authors
- Choi, Yongha; Choi, Rakjun; Kim, Jihyun
- Issue Date
- 15-4월-2020
- Publisher
- ELSEVIER
- Keywords
- Aluminum nitride; Electrochemical etching
- Citation
- APPLIED SURFACE SCIENCE, v.509
- Indexed
- SCIE
SCOPUS
- Journal Title
- APPLIED SURFACE SCIENCE
- Volume
- 509
- URI
- https://scholar.korea.ac.kr/handle/2021.sw.korea/56609
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.apsusc.2020.145279
- ISSN
- 0169-4332
- Abstract
- Aluminum nitride (AlN) has an ultra-wide bandgap energy of 6.2 eV and is resistant to chemical etching owing to its high chemical stability, making it intractable in the device fabrication process. We developed a facile method of electrochemical (EC) etching of a high-quality AlN epitaxial layer, where both spatial selectivity and a controllable etch rate were achieved. Underneath porous metal electrodes, the lateral etch rate increased with the increasing external anodic bias, from 400 nm/min at 5 V to 700 nm/min at 15 V. Nonporous metal electrodes protected the AlN from etching in hot H3PO4, enabling the spatial selectivity. The high EC etch rate is attributed to the enhanced hole-assisted oxidation at the interface between the AlN and the etchant. The etch pit formed by EC etching exhibited an inverse hexagonal pyramid structure with {1 0 -1 - 1} face. As an alternative to dry etching, our method can be applied to the low-damage patterning of AlN with a controllable etch rate.
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Collections - College of Engineering > Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering > 1. Journal Articles
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