A NOVEL METHOD FOR ETCHING TRENCHES IN SILICON-CARBIDE

In this paper, a novel trench etching technique for silicon carbide is described. In this technique, ion implantation is used to first creat e an amorphous silicon carbide region. The amorphous layer is then etc hed away by wet chemical etching. Trenches of 0.3 to 0.8 mu m have bee n obtained using a single implantation/etching step. It has been demon strated that deeper trenches can be obtained by repeating the implanta tion/etching step with platinum as a masking material. The etched surf ace was found to be smooth when compared with reactive ion etched surf aces reported for silicon carbide.