A high-temperature electrostatic chuck (HT-ESC) for nonvolatile materials dry etch was developed and applied for etching nonvolatile materials used in ferroelectric random-access memory or magnetic random-access memory. The HT-ESC can be heated up to 400 degreesC from room temperature within 40 min, and the temperature distribution across a 200 min wafer during chucking is 407 9 degreesC. The HT-ESC generates a clamping pressure of over 1 kPa in the temperature range from 250 to 400 degreesC. According to the results of etching platinum with a standard inductively coupled plasma etcher equipped with the HT-ESC, a measured etching time can be reduced by 41% by heating the sample up to 300 degreesC compared with etching at 40 degreesC. It can thus be concluded that this HT-ESC is suitable for-etching nonvolatile materials. (C) 2005 American Vacuum Society.