Factors affecting reactive ion etching of corning 7059 glass

Abstract

Glass is a popular substrate for flat panel display technology. Reactive ion etching (RIE) is a method for thin film device patterning but has not yet been widely applied to this technology. One complication is the effect of RIE on glass. A conventional glass contains a complicated structure that makes its etching characteristic very different from that of SiO2. Corning 7059 glass was reactive ion etched with CF4-02 plasma (1). The optimum condition was low oxygen concentration, low pressure, and high cathode self bias voltage. The etch bottleneck step was the removal of aluminum and barium oxides. In this paper both CF4, and CF3C1 were used separately to etch Corning 7059 glass under various conditions. The effect of Teflon material on the electrode during the etch is also examined. © 1989 SPIE.