In this study, thermally assisted reactive ion etching (TRIE) was evaluated by both experiments and simulations. TRIE employs a self-heated stage instead of the etching stage of a regular RIE apparatus. The self-heated stage was designed on the base of the simulation results, and its heating characteristics upon the application of radio frequency (RF) power were evaluated. The temperature of the stage increases rapidly within 10 min because of the low thermal capacitance of the stage. An etch rate of 0.6 μm/min and an etch selectivity of about 30 were achieved for titanium etching with SF6 plasma. In addition, we also investigated the application of TRIE for various kinds of minor metals (Mo, Ta, Nb, and Ti alloy) for the first time and achieved higher etch rates and etch selectivities than those of regular RIE.