https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201716201003
Optimization of reactive-ion etching (RIE) parameters for fabrication of tantalum pentoxide (Ta2O5) waveguide using Taguchi method
1
School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom.
2
School of Bioprocess Engineering, University Malaysia Perlis, Arau 02600, Malaysia.
* Corresponding author: firdausmuttalib@unimap.edu.my
Published online: 22 November 2017
In this paper, we demonstrate the optimization of reactive-ion etching (RIE) parameters for the fabrication of tantalum pentoxide (Ta2O5) waveguide with chromium (Cr) hard mask in a commercial OIPT Plasmalab 80 RIE etcher. A design of experiment (DOE) using Taguchi method was implemented to find optimum RF power, mixture of CHF3 and Ar gas ratio, and chamber pressure for a high etch rate, good selectivity, and smooth waveguide sidewall. It was found that the optimized etch condition obtained in this work were RF power = 200 W, gas ratio = 80 %, and chamber pressure = 30 mTorr with an etch rate of 21.6 nm/min, Ta2O5/Cr selectivity ratio of 28, and smooth waveguide sidewall.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2017
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
