Dry etching is used in conjunction with photolithographic techniques to attack certain areas of a semiconductor surface in order to form recesses in material.
Along with semiconductor manufacturing, micromachining and display production, the removal of organic residues by oxygen plasmas is sometimes correctly described as a dry etch process.
For example, dry etch steps that come into contact with or form critical parts of the device may require higher levels of directionality, selectivity, and uniformity.
The tradeoff is that more complex dry etch equipment comes at a higher cost to purchase and is more difficult to understand, more expensive to maintain, and may operate more slowly.
[1][2] The anisotropic dry etching process was developed by Hwa-Nien Yu at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in the early 1970s.