The authors investigated the etching characteristics of three kinds of methacrylate polymer films, which have the same main chain but with different side chains, using a plasma beam irradiation apparatus. The polymers are polytbutylmethacrylate, polybenzylmethacrylate, and polycyclohexylmethacrylate. The major desorbed products during nitrogen plasma beam etching were found to be HCN and C2N2 for all methacrylate polymer films. The desorbed products originating from the polymer structure, namely, the main chain and the side chain, were hardly observed. The energy distributions of desorbed products were mainly composed of Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution with a small component of collision cascade distribution for all three polymers and were slightly dependent on the ion energy. It is concluded that chemical sputtering, which can be defined as the production of weakly bound species by ion bombardment, followed by thermal desorption, is the significant ion induced mechanism of organic polymer etching. (c) 2006 American Vacuum Society.