• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1996.10b
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• pp.1360-1363
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• 1996

EPD(End Point Detection) is used to decide etching degree of layer which must be removed at wafer etching process in plasma etching process which is one of the most important process in semiconductor manufacturing. In this thesis, the method which detects malfunction of etching process in real-time will be discussed. Several EPD signal traces are collected in normal plasma etching condition and used as reference EPD signal traces. Critical points can be detected by applying differentiation and zero-crossing techniques to reference EPD signal. Mean and standard deviation of critical parameters which is memorized from reference EPD signal are calculated and these determine the lower and higher limit of control chart. And by applying statical control chart to EPD signals which are collected in real etching process malfunctions of process are detected in real-time. By means of applying this method to the real etching process we prove our method can accurately detect the malfunction of etching process and can compensate disadvantage of current industrial method.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.433-440
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• 1998

The purpose of this study is to provide an integrated process control system for plasma etching. The control system is designed to employ neural network for the modeling of plasma etching process and to utilize genetic algorithm to search for the appropriate selection of control input variables, and to provide a control chart to maintain the process output within a desired range in the real plasma etching process. The target equipment is the one operating in DRAM production lines. The result shows that the integrated system developed is practical value in the improved performance of plasma etching process.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.97-100
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• 2018

$NF_3$ Plasma etching of silicon was conducted by injecting only $NF_3$ gas into reactive ion etching. $NF_3$ Plasma etching was done in intermediate pressure. Silicon etching by $NF_3$ plasma in reactive ion etching was diagnosed through residual gas analyzer and optical emission spectroscopy. In plasma etching, optical emission spectroscopy is generally used to know what kinds of species in plasma. Also, residual gas analyzer is mainly to know the byproducts of etching process. Through experiments, the results of optical emission spectroscopy during silicon etching by $NF_3$ plasma was analyzed with connecting the results of etch rate of silicon and residual gas analyzer. It was confirmed that $NF_3$ plasma etching of silicon in reactive ion etching accords with the characteristic of reactive ion etching.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 1997.11a
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• pp.279-281
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• 1997

The properties of Platinum dry etching were investigated in MICP(Magnetized Inductively Coupled Plasma). 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 produce feature sizes that exceed the original dimension of the PR size and the etch profile has needle-like shape.[1] Generally, $Cl_2$ plasma is used for the fence-free etching.[1][2][3] The main object of this study was to investigate a new process technology for the fence-free Pt etching. Platinum was etched with Ar plasma at the cryogenic temperature and with Ar/$SF_6$ plasma at room temperature. In cryogenic etching, the height of fence was reduced to 20% at $-190^{\circ}C$ compared with that of room temp., but the etch profile was not fence-free. In Ar/$SF_6$ Plasma, chemical reaction took part in etching process. The trend of properties of Ar/$SF_6$ Plasma etching is similar to that of $Cl_2$ Plasma etching. Fence-free etching was possible, but PR selectivity was very low. A new gas chemistry for fence-free Platinum etching was proposed in this study.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.111-117
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• 2008

We have studied surface roughness, contamination of impurity, bonding with some gas element, reflectance and zeta potential on masks to be generated or changed during photolithography/dry or wet etching process. Mask surface roughness was not changed after photolithography/dry etching process. But surface roughness was changed on some area under MoSi film of Cr/MoSi/Qz. There was not detected any impurity on mask surface after plasma dry etching process. Reflectance of mask was increased after variable plasma etching treatment, especially when mask was treated with plasma including $O_2$ gas. Blank mask was positively charged when the mask was treated with Cr plasma etching gas($Cl_2:250$ sccm/He:20 $sccm/O_2:29$ seem, source power:100 W/bias power:20 W, 300 sec). But this positive charge was changed to negative charge when the mask was treated with $CF_4$ gas for MoSi plasma etching, resulting better wet cleaning. There was appeared with negative charge on MoSi/Qz mask treated with Cr plasma etching process condition, and this mask was measured with more negative after SC-1 wet cleaning process, resulting better wet cleaning. This mask was charged with positive after treatment with $O_2$ plasma again, resulting bad wet cleaning condition.

• Journal of the Speleological Society of Korea
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• no.78
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• pp.29-31
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• 2007

This paper is devoted to a study of the characterization of the plasma state. For the purpose of monitoring plasma condition, we experiment on reactive ion etching (RIE) process. Without actual etch process, generated oxygen plasma, measurement of plasma emission intensity. Changing plasma process parameters, oxygen flow, RF power and chamber pressure have controlled. Using the optical emission spectroscopy (OES), we conform to the unique oxygen wavelength (777nm), the most powerful intensity region of the designated range. Increase of RF power and chamber pressure, emission intensity is increased. oxygen flow is not affect to emission intensity.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.17 no.7
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• pp.701-707
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• 2004

High aspect ratio silicon structure through deep silicon etching process have become indispensable for advanced MEMS applications. In this paper, we present the results of modified Bosch process to obtain anisotropic silicon structure with conventional Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) etcher instead of the expensive Bosch process systems. In modified Bosch process, etching step ($SFsub6$) / sidewall passivation ($Csub4Fsub8$) step time is much longer than commercialized Bosch scheme and process transition time is introduced between process steps to improve gas switching and RF power delivery efficiency. To optimize process parameters, etching ($SFsub6$) / sidewall passivation ($Csub4Fsub8$) time and ion energy effects on etching profile was investigated. Etch profile strongly depends on the period of etch / passivation and ion energy. Furthermore, substrate temperature during etching process was found to be an important parameter determining etching profile. Test structures with different pattern size have been etched for the comparison of the aspect ratio dependent etch rate and the formation of silicon grass. At optimized process condition, micropatterns etched with modified Bosch process showed nearly vertical sidewall and no silicon grass formation with etch rate of 1.2 ${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$/ min and the size of scallop of 250 nm.

• Clean Technology
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.101-105
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• 2003

Plasma etching technology has been developed since it is recognized that silicon etching is very crucial in MEMS(Micro Electro Mechanical System) technology. In this study ICP(Inductive Coupled Plasma) technology was used as a new plasma etching to increase ion density without increasing ion energy, and to maintain the etching directions. This plasma etching can be used for many MEMS applications, but it has been used for PCR(Polymerase Chain Reaction) device fabrication. Platen power, Coil power and process pressure were parameters for observing the etching rate changes. Conclusively Platen power 12W, Coil power 500W, etchng/passivation cycle 6/7sec gives the etching rate of $1.2{\mu}m/min$ and sidewall profile of $90{\pm}0.7^{\circ}$, exclusively. It was concluded from this study that it was possible to minimize the environmental effect by optimizing the etching process using SF6 gas.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.1-5
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• 2009

This investigation is applied Taguchi method and the analysis of variance(ANOVA) to the reactive ion etching(RIE) characteristics of $SiO_2$ film coated on a wafer with Experimental Analysis and Optimization of $CF_4/O_2$ Plasma Etching Process mixture. Plans of experiments via nine experimental runs are based on the orthogonal arrays. A $L_9$ orthogonal array was selected with factors and three levels. The three factors included etching time, RF power, gas mixture ratio. The etching rate of the film were measured as a function of those factors. In this study, the etching thickness mean and uniformity of thickness of the RIE are adopted as the quality targets of the RIE etching process. The partial factorial design of the Taguchi method provides an economical and systematic method for determining the applicable process parameters. The RIE are found to be the most significant factors in both the thickness mean and the uniformity of thickness for a RIE etching process.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.77-77
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• 2011

These days, a growing demand for memory device is filled up with the flash memory and the dynamic random access memory (DRAM). Although DRAM is a reasonable solution for current demand, the universal novel memory with high density, high speed and nonvolatility, needs to be developed. Among various new memories, the magnetic random access memory (MRAM) device is considered as one of good candidate memories because of excellent features including high density, high speed, low operating power and nonvolatility. The etching of MTJ stack which is composed of magnetic materials and insulator such as MgO is one of the vital process for MRAM. Recently, MgO has attracted great interest in the MTJ stack as tunneling barrier layer for its high tunneling magnetoresistance values. For the successful realization of high density MRAM, the etching process of MgO thin films should be investigated. Until now, there were some works devoted to the investigations on etch characteristics of MgO thin films. Initially, ion milling was applied to the etching of MgO thin films. However, ion milling has many disadvantages such as sidewall redeposition and etching damage. High density plasma etching containing the magnetically enhanced reactive ion etching and high density reactive ion etching have been employed for the improvement of etching process. In this work, inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etching (ICPRIE) system was adopted for the improvement of etching process using MgO thin films and etching gas mixes of $CH_4$/Ar and $CH_4$/$O_2$/Ar have been employed. The etch rates are measured by a surface profilometer and etch profiles are observed using field emission scanning emission microscopy (FESEM). The effects of gas concentration and etch parameters such as coil rf power, dc-bias voltage to substrate, and gas pressure on etch characteristics will be systematically explored.