Residual-free reactive ion etching of gold layers

Metal contacts on semiconductors devices are normally defined by lift-off process, because no well-defined etch processes exist for some rare metals. In this work, an RIE process for gold contacts is introduced which requires a high-density plasma, generated by electron cyclotron resonance. The proof is given by the residual-free etching without fence-generation and micromasking in the vicinity of the mask.