• Corrosion Science and Technology
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• 제2권4호
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• pp.189-193
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• 2003

The Ru etching using $O_2/C_{12}$ plasmas has been studied by employing the helicon etcher. The changes of Ru etch rate, Ru to $SiO_2$ etch selectivity and Ru electrode etching slope with varied process variables were investigated. The Ru etching slope at the optimized etching condition was measured to be $84^{\circ}$. We reveal that the Ru etching using $O_2/C_{12}$ plasma generates the $RuO_2$ thin film. Possible mechanism of Ru etching is discussed.

• 한국진공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국진공학회 2015년도 제49회 하계 정기학술대회 초록집
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• pp.132-132
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• 2015

Virtual metrology (VM) model based on plasma information (PI) parameter for C4F8 plasma-assisted oxide etching processes is developed to predict and monitor the process results such as an etching rate with improved performance. To apply fault detection and classification (FDC) or advanced process control (APC) models on to the real mass production lines efficiently, high performance VM model is certainly required and principal component regression (PCR) is preferred technique for VM modeling despite this method requires many number of data set to obtain statistically guaranteed accuracy. In this study, as an effective method to include the 'good information' representing parameter into the VM model, PI parameters are introduced and applied for the etch rate prediction. By the adoption of PI parameters of b-, q-factors and surface passivation parameters as PCs into the PCR based VM model, information about the reactions in the plasma volume, surface, and sheath regions can be efficiently included into the VM model; thus, the performance of VM is secured even for insufficient data set provided cases. For mass production data of 350 wafers, developed PI based VM (PI-VM) model was satisfied required prediction accuracy of industry in C4F8 plasma-assisted oxide etching process.

• 한국전기전자재료학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국전기전자재료학회 2009년도 하계학술대회 논문집
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• pp.126-126
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• 2009

Noninvasive plasma diagnostic technique is introduced to analyze and characterize HICP (Helmholtz Inductively Coupled Plasma) source during the plasma etching process. The HICP reactor generates plasma mainly through RF source power at 13.56MHz RF power and RF bias power of 12.56MHz is applied to the cathode to independently control ion density and ion energy. For noninvasive sensors, the RF sensor and the OES (Optical emission spectroscopy) were employed since it is possible to obtain both physical and chemical properties of the reactor with plasma etching. The plasma impedance and optical spectra were observed while altering process parameters such as pressure, gas flow, source and bias power during the poly silicon etching process. In this experiment, we have found that data measured from these noninvasive sensors can be correlated to etch results. In this paper, we discuss the relationship between process parameters and the measurement data from RF sensor and OES such as plasma impedance and optical spectra and using these relationships to analyze and characterize H-ICP source.

• 한국재료학회지
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• 제27권4호
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• pp.211-215
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• 2017

Reactive Ion Etching (RIE) and wet etching are employed in existing texturing processes to fabricate solar cells. Laser etching is used for particular purposes such as selective etching for grooves. However, such processes require a higher level of cost and longer processing time and those factors affect the unit cost of each process of fabricating solar cells. As a way to reduce the unit cost of this process of making solar cells, an atmospheric plasma source will be employed in this study for the texturing of crystalline silicon wafers. In this study, we produced the atmospheric plasma source and examined its basic properties. Then, using the prepared atmospheric plasma source, we performed the texturing process of crystalline silicon wafers. The results obtained from texturing processes employing the atmospheric plasma source and employing RIE were examined and compared with each other. The average reflectance of the specimens obtained from the atmospheric plasma texturing process was 7.88 %, while that of specimens obtained from the texturing process employing RIE was 8.04 %. Surface morphologies of textured wafers were examined and measured through Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and similar shapes of reactive ion etched wafers were found. The Power Conversion Efficiencies (PCE) of the solar cells manufactured through each process were 16.97 % (atmospheric plasma texturing) and 16.29 % (RIE texturing).

• 제어로봇시스템학회논문지
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• 제4권4호
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• pp.506-516
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• 1998

In this paper, an algorithm is proposed to detect the malfunction of plasma-etching characteristics using EPD signal trajectories. EPD signal trajectories offer many information on plasma-etching process state, so they must be considered as the most important data sets to predict the wafer states in plasma-etching process. A recent work has shown that EPD signal trajectories were successfully incorporated into process modeling through critical parameter extraction, but this method consumes much effort and time. So Principal component analysis(PCA) can be applied. PCA is the linear transformation algorithm which converts correlated high-dimensional data sets to uncorrelated low-dimensional data sets. Based on this reason neural network model can improve its performance and convergence speed when it uses the features which are extracted from raw EPD signals by PCA. Wafer-state variables, Critical Dimension(CD) and uniformity can be estimated by simulation using neural network model into which EPD signals are incorporated. After CD and uniformity values are predicted, proposed algorithm determines whether malfunction values are produced or not. If malfunction values arise, the etching process is stopped immediately. As a result, through simulation, we can keep the abnormal state of etching process from propagating into the next run. All the procedures of this algorithm can be performed on-line, i.e. wafer to wafer.

• ETRI Journal
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• 제26권4호
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• pp.297-306
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• 2004

A plasma is a collection of charged particles and on average is electrically neutral. In fabricating integrated circuits, plasma etching is a key means to transfer a photoresist pattern into an underlayer material. To construct a predictive model of plasma-etching processes, a polynomial neural network (PNN) is applied. This process was characterized by a full factorial experiment, and two attributes modeled are its etch rate and DC bias. According to the number of input variables and type of polynomials to each node, the prediction performance of the PNN was optimized. The various performances of the PNN in diverse environments were compared to three types of statistical regression models and the adaptive network fuzzy inference system (ANFIS). As the demonstrated high-prediction ability in the simulation results shows, the PNN is efficient and much more accurate from the point of view of approximation and prediction abilities.

• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
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• 제3권4호
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• pp.187-190
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• 2005

High aspect ratio via-hole etching process has emerged as one of the most crucial means to increase component density for ULSI devices. Because of charge accumulation in via-hole, this sophisticated and important process still hold several problems, such as etching stop and loading effects during fabrication of integrated circuits. Indeed, the concern actually depends on accumulated charge. For monitoring accumulated charge during plasma etching process, charge-up monitoring sensor was fabricated and tested under some plasma conditions. This paper presents a neural network-based technique for analyzing and modeling several electrical performance of plasma charge-up monitoring sensor.

• 한국정보통신학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국해양정보통신학회 2005년도 추계종합학술대회
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• pp.303-306
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• 2005

High aspect ration via-hole etching process has emerged as one of the most crucial means to increase component density for ULSI devices. Because of charge accumulation in via hole, this sophisticated and important process still hold several problems, such as etching stop, loading effects during fabrication of integrated circuits. Indeed, the concern actually depends on accumulated charge. For monitoring accumulated charge during plasma etching process, charge-up monitoring sensor was fabricated and tested under some plasma conditions. This paper presents a neural network-based technique for analyzing and modeling several electrical performance of plasma charge-up monitoring sensor.

• 대한전기학회:학술대회논문집
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• 대한전기학회 1997년도 추계학술대회 논문집 학회본부
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• pp.276-278
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• 1997

The reliable etching process is one of the essential steps in fabricating GaN based-device. High etch rate is needed to obtain a deeply etched structure and perfect anisotropic etched facet is needed to obtain lasing profile. In the research, therefore, we had proposed a planar inductively coupled plasma etcher (Planar ICP Etcher) as a high density plasma source, and studied the etching mechanism using the $CH_4/H_2$/Ar gas mixture. Dry etching characteristics such as etch rate, anisotropic etching profile and so on, for the III-V nitride layers were investigated using Planar ICP Etcher, based on the plasma characteristic as a variation of plasma process parameters.

• 한국진공학회:학술대회논문집
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• 한국진공학회 2016년도 제50회 동계 정기학술대회 초록집
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• pp.93-93
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• 2016

Large scale integrated circuits (LSIs) has been improved by the shrinkage of the circuit dimensions. The smaller chip sizes and increase in circuit density require the miniaturization of the line-width and space between metal interconnections. Therefore, an extreme precise control of the critical dimension and pattern profile is necessary to fabricate next generation nano-electronics devices. The pattern profile control of plasma etching with an accuracy of sub-nanometer must be achieved. To realize the etching process which achieves the problem, understanding of the etching mechanism and precise control of the process based on the real-time monitoring of internal plasma parameters such as etching species density, surface temperature of substrate, etc. are very important. For instance, it is known that the etched profiles of organic low dielectric (low-k) films are sensitive to the substrate temperature and density ratio of H and N atoms in the H2/N2 plasma [1]. In this study, we introduced a feedback control of actual substrate temperature and radical density ratio monitored in real time. And then the dependence of etch rates and profiles of organic films have been evaluated based on the substrate temperatures. In this study, organic low-k films were etched by a dual frequency capacitively coupled plasma employing the mixture of H2/N2 gases. A 100-MHz power was supplied to an upper electrode for plasma generation. The Si substrate was electrostatically chucked to a lower electrode biased by supplying a 2-MHz power. To investigate the effects of H and N radical on the etching profile of organic low-k films, absolute H and N atom densities were measured by vacuum ultraviolet absorption spectroscopy [2]. Moreover, using the optical fiber-type low-coherence interferometer [3], substrate temperature has been measured in real time during etching process. From the measurement results, the temperature raised rapidly just after plasma ignition and was gradually saturated. The temporal change of substrate temperature is a crucial issue to control of surface reactions of reactive species. Therefore, by the intervals of on-off of the plasma discharge, the substrate temperature was maintained within ${\pm}1.5^{\circ}C$ from the set value. As a result, the temperatures were kept within $3^{\circ}C$ during the etching process. Then, we etched organic films with line-and-space pattern using this system. The cross-sections of the organic films etched for 50 s with the substrate temperatures at $20^{\circ}C$ and $100^{\circ}C$ were observed by SEM. From the results, they were different in the sidewall profile. It suggests that the reactions on the sidewalls changed according to the substrate temperature. The precise substrate temperature control method with real-time temperature monitoring and intermittent plasma generation was suggested to contribute on realization of fine pattern etching.