Fabrication of airhole-type GaInAsP/InP photonic crystal by ICP etching

Photonic crystals (PCs) are multi-dimensional periodic structures, which have potentials for various photonic device applications. Especially, GaInAsP/InP PC can be applied to devices at fiber communication wavelengths, including high performance light emitters with small surface recombination problem. Most of them are based on 2-D PCs, which are fabricated by lithography and dry etching. Here, the lattice pitch is typically 0.4 - 0.44 /spl mu/m and the airhole diameter 0.2 - 0.3 /spl mu/m for the photonic band gap (PBG) at /spl lambda/ = 1.55 /spl mu/m. The precise diameter, the uniformity, the smoothness and the high aspect ratio are required to obtain sufficient PBG effect. In general, however, GaInAsP/InP is more difficult to process than Si and GaAs. In this study, we used inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etching. In this presentation, we report the detail of etching conditions and results.