The production of high-quality epitaxial layers almost always involves an etching step of silicon substrates with HCl gas prior to epitaxy, In this work, an investigation has been made on the etch rate and the etch-pit formation as a function of HCl gas concentration and etch temperature at atmospheric pressure (1 atm.) and reduced pressure (0.1 atom.). As a result, it is found that the etch rate is proportional to the square of the HCI gas concentration (XHC12) and the apparent ativation energy is between 0 and 111 Kcal/mole for both ammospheric and reduced pressure operation. From these results, it is expected that the HCI etching of silicon in reduced pressure operation proceeds, as in atmospheric operation, via the reaction ; Si + 2HCl ↔ SiCl2 + H2.