Study on inductively coupled plasma etching induced damage of InSb

InSb is an important III-V narrow gap compound semiconductor material. It is widely used in optoelectronic devices manufacture especially mid-wave infrared detectors. With the application of ICP etching in large-scale InSb IRFPA detectors fabrication process, the influence of ICP etching induced damage on InSb IRFPA devices has been paid more attention. Surface states which reflect the characteristics of semiconductor surface play an important role in the study on etching damage of semiconductor materials. In this paper, the surface state density on three InSb samples: one sample without etching, one sample etched by ICP and another sample wet etched by lactic acid/nitric acid etchant after ICP etching, is tested and calculated by quasi-static C-V method. The characterization and removal of ICP etching induced damage are investigated. Furthermore, the method of testing and calculating the distribution of surface state density has been presented detailedly in this paper. This work plays a significant role in the development of large-scale InSb IRFPA detectors.