• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2003.07b
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• pp.868-871
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• 2003

In recent years, silicon carbide has emerged as an important material for MEMS application. In order to fabricate an SiC film based MEMS structure by using chemical etching method, high operating temperature is required due to high chemical stability. Therefore, dry etching using plasma is the best solution. SiC film was deposited by thermal CVD at the temperature of $1000^{\circ}C$ and pressure of 10 torr. SiC was dry etched with a reactive ion etching (RIE) system, using $SF_6/O_2$ and $CF_4/O_2$ gas mixture. Etch rate have been investigated as a function of oxygen concentration in the gas mixture, RF power, and working pressure. Etch rate was measured by surface profiler and FE-SEM. $SF_6/O_2$ gas mixture has been shown high etch rate than $CF_4/O_2$ gas mixture. Maximum etch rate appeared at 450W of RF power. $O_2$ dilute mixtures resulted in an increasing of etch rate up to 40%, and the superior anisotropic cross section was observed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 1999.07a
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• pp.65-65
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• 1999

Dry etching technique provides more easy controllability on the etch profile such as anisotropic etching than wet etching process and the results of lots of researches on the characterization of various plasmas or ion beams for semiconductor etching have been reported. Chlorine-based plasmas or chlorine ion beam have been often used to etch several semiconductor materials, in particular Si-based materials. We have studied the effect of He flow rate on the Si and SiO2 dry etching using chlorine-based plasma. Experiments were performed using reactive ion etching system. RF power was 300W. Cl2 gas flow rate was fixed at 58.6 sccm, and the He flow rate was varied from 0 to 120 sccm. Fig. 1 presents the etch depth of si layer versus the etching time at various He flow rate. In case of low He flow rate, the etch rate was measured to be negligible for both Si and SiO2. As the He flow increases over 30% of the total inlet gas flow, the plasma state becomes stable and the etch rate starts to increase. In high Ge flow rate (over 60%), the relation between the etch depth and the time was observed to be nearly linear. Fig. 2 presents the variation of the etch rate depending on the He flow rate. The etch rate increases linearly with He flow rate. The results of this preliminary study show that Cl2/He mixture plasma is good candidate for the controllable si dry etching.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2007.06a
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• pp.109-110
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• 2007

Plasma etching process에서 magnetic field 영향에 관한 연구이다. High level dry etch process를 위해서는 high density plasma(HDP)가 요구된다. HDP를 위해서 MERIE(Magnetical enhancement reactive ion etcher) type의 설비가 사용되며 process chamber side에 4개의 magnetic coil을 사용한다. 이런 magnetic factor가 특히 wafer edge부문에 plasma charging에 의한 damage를 유발시키고 이로 인해 device Vth(Threshold voltage)가 shift 되면서 제품의 program 동작 문제의 원인이 되는 것을 발견하였다. 이번 연구에서 magnetic field와 관련된 plasma charge damage를 확인하고 damage free한 공정조건을 확보하게 되었다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
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• 1999.10a
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• pp.56-56
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• 1999

For advanced TFT-LCD manufacturing processes, dry etching of thin-film layers(a-Si, $SiN_x$, SID & gate electrodes, ITO etc.) is increasingly preferred instead of conventional wet etching processes. To dry etch Al gate electrode which is advantageous for reducing propagation delay time of scan signals, high etch rate, slope angle control, and etch uniformity are required. For the Al gate electrode, some metals such as Ti and Nd are added in Al to prevent hillocks during post-annealing processes in addition to gaining low-resistivity($<10u{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$), high performance to heat tolerance and corrosion tolerance of Al thin films. In the case of AI-Nd alloy films, however, low etch rate and poor selectivity over photoresist are remained as a problem. In this study, to enhance the etch rates together with etch uniformity of AI-Nd alloys, magnetized inductively coupled plasma(MICP) have been used instead of conventional ICP and the effects of various magnets and processes conditions have been studied. MICP was consisted of fourteen pairs of permanent magnets arranged along the inside of chamber wall and also a Helmholtz type axial electromagnets was located outside the chamber. Gas combinations of $Cl_2,{\;}BCl_3$, and HBr were used with pressures between 5mTorr and 30mTorr, rf-bias voltages from -50Vto -200V, and inductive powers from 400W to 800W. In the case of $Cl_2/BCl_3$ plasma chemistry, the etch rate of AI-Nd films and etch selectivity over photoresist increased with $BCl_3$ rich etch chemistries for both with and without the magnets. The highest etch rate of $1,000{\AA}/min$, however, could be obtained with the magnets(both the multi-dipole magnets and the electromagnets). Under an optimized electromagnetic strength, etch uniformity of less than 5% also could be obtained under the above conditions.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.28-31
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• 2013

A volcano shaped gated Si-FEA (silicon field emitter array) was simply fabricated using sputtering as a gate electrode deposition and lift-off for the removal of the oxide mask, respectively. Due to the limited step coverage of well-controlled sputtering and the high aspect ratio in Si dry etch caused by high RF power, it was possible to obtain Si FEAs with a stable volcano shaped gate structure and to realize the restriction of gate leakage current in field emission characteristics. For 100 tip arrays and 625 tip arrays, gate leakage currents were restricted to less than 1% of the anode current in spite of the volcano-shaped gate structure. It was also possible to keep the emitters stable without any failure between the Si cathode and gate electrode in field emission for a long time.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2004.07a
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• pp.417-420
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• 2004

The electrical effects of dry-etch on n-type GaN by an inductively coupled $Cl_2/CH_4/H_2/Ar$ plasma were investigated as a function of ion energy, by means of ohmic and Schottky metallization method. The specific contact resistivity(${\rho}_c$) of ohmic contact was decreased, while the leakage current in Schottky diode was increased with increasing ion energy due to the preferential sputtering of nitrogen. At a higher rf power, an additional effect of damage was found on the etched sample, which was sensitive to the dopant concentration in terms of the ${\rho}_c$ of ohmic contact. This was attributed to the effects such as the formation of deep acceptor as well as the electron-enriched surface layer within the depletion layer. Furthermore, thermal annealing process enhanced the ohmic and Schottky property of heavily damaged surface.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.232-233
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• 2008

The 4H-SiC schottky diodes treated by the various dry etch methods were fabricated and electrically characterized. The post etch process including an Inductively Coupled Plasma(ICP) etch and a Neutron Beam Etch(NBE) was performed after a high-temperature activation annealing without graphite cap in order to eliminate the damaged surface generated during the activation annealing. The reverse leakage current of diode treated by ICP was 1/35 times lower than that of the diode without any post etch at the anode bias of -100V, while the reverse leakage current of diode treated by NBE was 1/44 times lower at the same bias.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.8 no.4A
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• pp.476-481
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• 1999

Characteristics of platinum dry etching were investigated in a cryogenic magnetized inductively coupled plasma (MICP). The problem with platinum etching is the redeposition of sputtered platinum on the sidewall. Because of the redeposits on the sidewall, the etching of patterned platinum structure produces feature sizes that exceed the original dimension of the PR size and the etch profile has needle-like shape [1]. The main object of this study was to investigate a new process technology for fence-free Pt etching As bias voltage increased, the height of fence was reduced. In cryogenic etching, the height of fence was reduced to 20% at-$190^{\circ}C$ compared with that of room temperature, however the etch profile was not still fence-free. In Ar/$SF_6$ Plasma, fence-free Pt etching was possible. As the ratio of $SF_6$ gas flow is more than 14% of total gas flow, the etch profile had no fence. Chemical reaction seemed to take place in the etch process.

• Proceedings of the International Microelectronics And Packaging Society Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.14-14
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• 2003

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2005.07a
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• pp.164-165
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• 2005

The dry etch characteristics of GaAs over both AlGaAs and InGaP in planar inductively coupled $BCl_3$-based plasmas(ICP) with additions of $SF_6$ or $CF_4$ were studied. The additions of flourine gases provided enhanced etch selectivities of GaAs/AlGaAs and GaAs/InGaP. The etch stop reaction involving formation of involatile $AlF_3$ and $InF_3$ (boiling points of etch products: $AlF_3\sim1300^{\circ}C$, $InF_3$ > $1200^{\circ}C$ at atmosphere) were found to be effective under high density inductively coupled plasma condition. Decrease of etch rates of all materials was probably due to strong increase of flourine atoms in the discharge, which blocked the surface of the material against chlorine neutral adsorption. The process parameters were ICP source power (0 - 500 W), RF chuck power (0 - 30 W) and variable gas composition. The process results were characterized in terms of etch rate, selectivities of GaAs over AlGaAs and InGaP, surface morphology, surface roughness and residues after etching.