• 한국진공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국진공학회 2012년도 제43회 하계 정기 학술대회 초록집
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• pp.80-81
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• 2012

Recently, one of the critical issues in the etching processes of the nanoscale devices is to achieve ultra-high aspect ratio contact (UHARC) profile without anomalous behaviors such as sidewall bowing, and twisting profile. To achieve this goal, the fluorocarbon plasmas with major advantage of the sidewall passivation have been used commonly with numerous additives to obtain the ideal etch profiles. However, they still suffer from formidable challenges such as tight limits of sidewall bowing and controlling the randomly distorted features in nanoscale etching profile. Furthermore, the absence of the available plasma simulation tools has made it difficult to develop revolutionary technologies to overcome these process limitations, including novel plasma chemistries, and plasma sources. As an effort to address these issues, we performed a fluorocarbon surface kinetic modeling based on the experimental plasma diagnostic data for silicon dioxide etching process under inductively coupled C4F6/Ar/O2 plasmas. For this work, the SiO2 etch rates were investigated with bulk plasma diagnostics tools such as Langmuir probe, cutoff probe and Quadruple Mass Spectrometer (QMS). The surface chemistries of the etched samples were measured by X-ray Photoelectron Spectrometer. To measure plasma parameters, the self-cleaned RF Langmuir probe was used for polymer deposition environment on the probe tip and double-checked by the cutoff probe which was known to be a precise plasma diagnostic tool for the electron density measurement. In addition, neutral and ion fluxes from bulk plasma were monitored with appearance methods using QMS signal. Based on these experimental data, we proposed a phenomenological, and realistic two-layer surface reaction model of SiO2 etch process under the overlying polymer passivation layer, considering material balance of deposition and etching through steady-state fluorocarbon layer. The predicted surface reaction modeling results showed good agreement with the experimental data. With the above studies of plasma surface reaction, we have developed a 3D topography simulator using the multi-layer level set algorithm and new memory saving technique, which is suitable in 3D UHARC etch simulation. Ballistic transports of neutral and ion species inside feature profile was considered by deterministic and Monte Carlo methods, respectively. In case of ultra-high aspect ratio contact hole etching, it is already well-known that the huge computational burden is required for realistic consideration of these ballistic transports. To address this issue, the related computational codes were efficiently parallelized for GPU (Graphic Processing Unit) computing, so that the total computation time could be improved more than few hundred times compared to the serial version. Finally, the 3D topography simulator was integrated with ballistic transport module and etch reaction model. Realistic etch-profile simulations with consideration of the sidewall polymer passivation layer were demonstrated.

• 한국전기전자재료학회논문지
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• 제26권11호
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• pp.826-830
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• 2013

In this paper, we carried out the investigations of both etch characteristics and mechanisms for the $SnO_2$ thin films in $O_2/BCl_3/Ar$ plasma. The dry etching characteristics of the $SnO_2$ thin films was studied by varying the $O_2/BCl_3/Ar$ gas mixing ratio. We determined the optimized process conditions that were as follows: a RF power of 700 W, a DC-bias voltage of - 150 V, and a process pressure of 2 Pa. The maximum etch rate was 509.9 nm/min in $O_2/BCl_3/Ar$=(3:4:16 sccm) plasma. From XPS analysis, the etch mechanism of the $SnO_2$ thin films in the $O_2/BCl_3/Ar$ plasma can be identified as the ion-assisted chemical reaction while the role of ion bombardment includes the destruction of the metal-oxide bonds as well as the cleaning of the etched surface form the reaction products.

• 대한전자공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한전자공학회 1999년도 하계종합학술대회 논문집
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• pp.922-925
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• 1999

The Silylation photo-resist etch process was tested by Enhanced-ICP dry etcher. The comparison of the two process results of micro pattern etching with 0.25${\mu}{\textrm}{m}$ CD by E-ICP and ICP reveals that E-ICP has better quality than ICP The etch rate and the microloading effect was improved in E-ICP Especially, the problem of the lateral etch was improved in E-ICP.

• 전자공학회논문지D
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• 제35D권1호
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• pp.27-33
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• 1998

In this study, chlorine(Cl)-based gas chemistry is generally used to etching for AlCu films metallization.The corrosion phenomena of AlCu films were examined with XPS (X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy), SEM 9Scanning electron microscopy), and TEM (Transmission electron microscopy). SF$_{6}$ plasma treatment sulbsequent to the etching process preventas the corrosion effectively in the pressure of 300 mTorr. It is found that the cholrine atoms on the etched surface are not substituted for fluorine atoms during SF$_{6}$ treatment, but a passivation layer on the surface by fluorine-related compounds would be formed. The passivation layer prevents the moisture penetration on the SF$_{6}$ treated surface and suppresses the corrsion sucessfully.fully.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• 제15권4호
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• pp.221-225
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• 2014

Although gold wire bonding techniques have already matured in semiconductor manufacturing, weakly bonded wires in semiconductor chip assembly can jeopardize the reliability of the final product. In this paper, weakly bonded or failed aluminum bonding pads are analyzed using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Auger electron Spectroscopy (AES), and energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX) to investigate potential contaminants on the bond pad. We found the source of contaminants is related to the dry etching process in the previous manufacturing step, and fluorocarbon plasma etching of a passivation layer showed meaningful evidence of the formation of fluorinated by-products of $AlF_x$ on the bond pads. Surface analysis of the contaminated aluminum layer revealed the presence of fluorinated compounds $AlOF_x$, $Al(OF)_x$, $Al(OH)_x$, and $CF_x$.

• 전자공학회논문지D
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• 제35D권2호
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• pp.25-32
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• 1998

In this paper, we report the result of the three-dimensional topography simultor, 3D-SURFILER(SURface proFILER) for the simulation of topographical evalution of the surface, curing a plasma etching process. We employed cell-removal algorithm to represent the topographical evoluation of the surface. The visibility with shadow effect was developed and applied to the spillover algorithm. To demonstrate the capability of 3D-SURFILER, we compared with simulated profiles with the SEM picture for dry and reactive ion etching(RIE) of the Si$_{3}$N$_{4}$ film and Pt film.

• 한국전기전자재료학회논문지
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• 제22권12호
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• pp.1005-1008
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• 2009

In this study, adaptively coupled plasma (ACP) source was used for dry etching of $Al_2O_3$ thin film. During the etching process, the wafer surface temperature is an important parameter to influent the etching characteristics. Therefore, the experiments were carried out in ACP to measuring the etch rate, the selectivities of $Al_2O_3$ thin film to mask materials and the etch profile as functions of $Cl_2$/Ar gas ratio and substrate temperature. The highest etch rate of $Al_2O_3$ was 65.4 nm/min at 75% of $Cl_2/(Cl_2+Ar)$ gas mixing ratio. The etched profile was characterized using field effect scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM). The chemical states of $Al_2O_3$ thin film surfaces were investigated with x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS).

• 한국표면공학회지
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• 제42권6호
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• pp.251-255
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• 2009

In this study, the plasma etching of the TaN thin film with $O_2/BCl_3$/Ar gas chemistries was investigated. The equipment for the etching was an inductively coupled plasma (ICP) system. The etch rate of the TaN thin film and the selectivity of TaN to $SiO_2$ and PR was studied as a function of the process parameters, including the amount of $O_2$ added, an RF power, a DC-bias voltage and the process pressure. When the gas mixing ratio was $O_2$(3 sccm)/$BCl_3$(6 sccm)/Ar(14 sccm), with the other conditions fixed, the highest etch rate was obtained. As the RF power and the dc-bias voltage were increased, the etch rate of the TaN thin film was increased. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) was used to investigate the chemical states of the surface of the TaN thin film.

• 한국전기전자재료학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국전기전자재료학회 2003년도 하계학술대회 논문집 Vol.4 No.1
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• pp.58-62
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• 2003

Silicon carbide (SiC) was etched in a $NF_3/CH_4$ inductively coupled plasma. The etch process was modeled by using a neural network called generalized regression neural network (GRNN). For modeling, the process was characterized by a $2^4$ full factorial experiment with one center point. To test model appropriateness, additional test data of 16 experiments were conducted. Particularly, the GRNN predictive capability was drastically improved by a genetic algorithm (GA). This was demonstrated by an improvement of more than 80% compared to a conventionally obtained model. Predicted model behaviors were highly consistent with actual measurements. From the optimized model, several plots were generated to examine etch rate variation under various plasma conditions. Unlike the typical behavior, the etch rate variation was quite different depending on the bias power Under lower bias powers, the source power effect was strongly dependent on induced dc bias. The etch rate was strongly correated to the do bias induced by the gas ratio. Particularly, the etch rate variation with the bias power at different gas ratio seemed to be limited by the etchant supply.

• 센서학회지
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• 제8권3호
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• pp.291-297
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• 1999

텅스텐 박막의 RIE 플라즈마 에칭공정에서 에칭속도는 $SF_6$와 $N_2$ 가스와의 상대적인 비와 공정 변수들에 매우 민감하게 의존함을 알았다. 질소 첨가효과와 텅스텐 박막/PR과의 에칭 선택비에 관련된 애칭 profile 결과를 SEM 사진으로 나타내었다. $SF_6-N_2$ 가스 에칭 후 텅스텐 막 표면에 잔존하는 화합물을 XPS를 이용하여 그 종류와 화학적 결합상태를 조사하고, 남아있는 F 이온들은 플라즈마가 켜져 있는 상태에서 OES를 이용하여 측정함으로써 정확한 에칭 메커니즘을 규명하고자 하였다.