Reactive ion etching can cause extensive, electrically active damage. This damage can be categorized as (i) impurity and etching‐ion implantation, (ii) residue and film formation, and (iii) intrinsic bonding damage. Instrinsic bonding damage is the most difficult to deal with since it appears inherent to dry etching processes which employ directed ion bombardment.The presence of this bonding damage can be established with electron spin resonance (ESR) which demonstrates that RIE produces the broad, isotropic paramagnetic resonance signal which characterizes trivalently bonded Si defects. In addition, the presence of this damage can be made readily apparent by simply fabricating metal‐semiconductor contacts on reactive ion etched surfaces. For silicon, such contacts, using non‐reactive metals, yield barrier heights which are reduced below expected values for n‐type material and increased above expected values for p‐type material. This result indicates the presence of positive charge in reactive ion etched ...