Plasma chemistries based on fluorine, iodine, chlorine, bromine, or methane-hydrogen have been investigated for use in the dry etching of SrS. The fastest etch rates were obtained with SF6/Ar at high powers under electron cyclotron resonance conditions, where the ion density is much higher (10(11) cm(-3)) than that of conventional reactive ion etching (similar to 10(9) cm(-3)). The etching is anisotropic for all of the chemistries studied, and a modest amount of surface smoothing may occur during etching under optimized conditions. In all cases, there was evidence of preferential loss of S from the near-surface of the SrS due to the difference in volatilities of the respective etch products for strontium and sulfur.