High-Density Hollow Cathode Plasma Etching for Field Emission Display Applications

This paper investigates the characteristics of a newly developed high density hollow cathode plasma(HCP) system and its application for the etching of silicon wafers. We used $SF_6$ and $O_2$ gases in the HCP dry etch process. This paper demonstrates very high plasma density of $2{\times}10^{12}cm^{-3}$ at a discharge current of 20 rna, Silicon etch rate of 1.3 ${\mu}m$/min was achieved with $SF_6/O_2$ plasma conditions of total gas pressure of 50 mTorr, gas flow rate of 40 seem, and RF power of200W. This paper presents surface etching characteristics on a crystalline silicon wafer and large area cast type multicrystlline silicon wafer. We obtained field emitter tips size of less than 0.1 ${\mu}m$ without any photomask step as well as with a conventional photolithography. Our experimental results can be applied to various display systems such as thin film growth and etching for TFT-LCDs, emitter tip formations for FEDs, and bright plasma discharge for PDP applications. In this research, we studied silicon etching properties by using the hollow cathode plasma system.