Dependence of cation ratio in Oxynitride Glasses on the plasma etching rate

Polycrystalline materials suchas yttria and alumina have been applied as a plasma resisting material for the plasma processing chamber. However, polycrystal line material may easily generate particles and the particles are sources of contamination during the plasma enhanced process. Amorphous material can be suitable to prevent particle generation due to absence of grain-boundaries. We manufactured nitrogen-containing $SiO_2-Al_2O_3-Y_2O_3$ based glasses with various contents of silicon and fixed nitrogen content. The thermal properties, mechanical properties and plasma etching rate were evaluated and compared for the different composition samples. The plasma etching behavior was estimated using XPS with depth profiling. From the result, the plasma etching rate highly depends on the silicon content and it may results from very low volatile temperature of SiF4 generated during plasma etching. The silicon concentration at the plasma etched surface was very low besides the concentration of yttrium and aluminum was relatively high than that of silicon due to high volatile temperature of fluorine compounds which consisted with aluminum and yttrium. Therefore, we conclude that the samples having low silicon content should be considered to obtain low plasma etching rate for the plasma resisting material.