Sintered aerosol masks for dry-etched quantum dots

Abstract
We report on a sintering step in producing ultra-fine silver aerosol particles to serve as etch masks for semiconductor quantum-dot structures. Our experiments found heating conditions that reshape the Ag particles, resulting in a spherical shape and very good size uniformities. Using this improved aerosol generation technology, we have dry etched InP columns with 24±5 nm diameter and with very good uniformity, with nearly every aerosol particle resulting in a column. Column arrays with a density as high as 3×109 cm−2 could be produced.
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