• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.472-472
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• 2011

The capacitive coupled plasma (CCP) has been extensively used in the semiconductor industry because it has not only good uniformity, but also low electron temperature. But CCP source has some problems, such as difficulty in varying the ion bombardment energy separately, low plasma density, and high processing pressure, etc. In this reason, dual frequency CCP has been investigated with a separate substrate biasing to control the plasma parameters and to obtain high etch rate with high etch selectivity. Especially, in this study, we studied on the etching of $SiO_2$ by using the pulse-time modulation in the dual-frequency CCP source composed of 60 MHz/ 2 MHz rf power. By using the combination of high /low rf powers, the differences in the gas dissociation, plasma density, and etch characteristics were investigated. Also, as the size of the semiconductor device is decreased to nano-scale, the etching of contact hole which has nano-scale higher aspect ratio is required. For the nano-scale contact hole etching by using continuous plasma, several etch problems such as bowing, sidewall taper, twist, mask faceting, erosion, distortions etc. occurs. To resolve these problems, etching in low process pressure, more sidewall passivation by using fluorocarbon-based plasma with high carbon ratio, low temperature processing, charge effect breaking, power modulation are needed. Therefore, in this study, to resolve these problems, we used the pulse-time modulated dual-frequency CCP system. Pulse plasma is generated by periodical turning the RF power On and Off state. We measured the etch rate, etch selectivity and etch profile by using a step profilometer and SEM. Also the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopic analysis on the surfaces etched by different duty ratio conditions correlate with the results above.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics A
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• v.31A no.4
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• pp.84-91
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• 1994

A compact electron cyclotron resonance(ECR) plasma system composed of a microwave generator and a magnet coil was fabricated. A Langmuir single probe was used to investigate the plasma characteristics of the system through I-V measurements. The performance of the compact ECR plasma system was tested for the case of silicon etching reaction with $CF_{4}/O_{2}$(30%) mixed gas. Electron density and etch rate increased to maximum values and then decreased with increasing argon gas pressure, but electron temperature changed in the opposite way. The electron density and the electron temperature of argon gas plasma were 0.85${\times}~5.5{\times}10^{10}cm^{-3}$ and 4.5~6.0 eV, respectively, in the pressure range from $3{\times}10^{4}$ to 0.05Torr. The etch rate reached a maximum value at the position of 2.5cm from the bottom of plasma cavity. Etch rate uniformity was $\pm$6% across 6cm wafer. Anisotropic index was 0.75 at 1.5${\times}10^{-4}$Torr.

• 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.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.48 no.9
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• pp.616-621
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• 1999

A planar inductively coupled $CH_4/H_2/Ar$plasma was used to investigate dry etch characteristics of GaN as a function of input power, RF bias power, and etch gas composition. Etch rate of GaN increased with input power up to 600 W and was saturated at the higher power. Also, the etch rates increased with increasing RF bias power, composition of $CH_4$ and Ar gas. We achieved the maximum etch rate of $930{\AA}$/min at the input power 400 W, RF bias power 250 W, and operational pressure 10 mTorr. This paper shows that smooth etched surface having roughness less than 1 nm in rms can be obtained by using planar inductively coupled plasma with $CH_4/H_2/Ar$ gas chemistry.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.37-41
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• 2021

We report on the formation of anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) film using sulfuric acid containing cerium salt. When the temperature of the sulfuric acid containing cerium salt changes from 5 ℃ to 20 ℃, the current density and the thickness growth rate increase. The surface morphology of the AAO film change according to the temperature of the electrolytes. And that affected the breakdown voltage and the plasma etch rate. The breakdown voltage per unit thickness was the highest at 15 ℃, and the plasma etch rate was the lowest at 10 ℃ at 2.80 ㎛/h.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.72-77
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• 2021

The radial distribution of etch rate was analyzed using the ion energy flux model in VHF-CCP. In order to exclude the effects of polymer passivation and F radical depletion on the etching. The experiment was performed in Ar/SF6 plasma with an SF6 molar ratio of 80% of operating pressure 10 and 20 mTorr. The radial distribution of Ar/SF6 plasma was diagnosed with RF compensated Langmuir Probe(cLP) and Retarding Field Energy Analyzer(RFEA). The radial distribution of ion energy flux was calculated with Bohm current times the sheath voltage which is determined by the potential difference between the plasma space potential (measured by cLP) and the surface floating potential (by RFEA). To analyze the etch rate uniformity, Si coupon samples were etched under the same condition. The ion energy flux and the etch rate show a close correlation of more than 0.94 of R² value. It means that the etch rate distribution is explained by the ion energy flux.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2002.05b
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• pp.74-77
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• 2002

Ferroelectric Random Access Memory(FRAM) and MEMS applications require noble metal or refractory metal oxide electrodes. In this study, Ru thin films were etched using $O_2$+10% $CF_4$ plasma in an inductively coupled plasma(ICP) etching system. The etch rate of Ru thin films was examined as function of rf power, DC bias applied to the substrate. The enhanced etch rate can be obtained not only with increasing rf power and DC bias voltage, but also with small addition $CF_4$ gas. The selectivity of $SiO_2$ over Ru are 1.3. Radical densities of oxygen and fluorine in $CF_4/O_2$ plasma have been investigated by optical emission spectroscopy(OES). The etching profiles of Ru films with an photoresist pattern were measured by a field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM). The additive gas increases the concentration of oxygen radicals, therefore increases the etch rate of the Ru thin films and enhances the etch slope. In $O_2$+10% $CF_4$ plasma, the etch rate of Ru thin films increases up to 10% $CF_4$ but decreases with increasing $CF_4$ mixing ratio.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.26 no.10
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• pp.1406-1418
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• 2002

The direct simulation Monte Carlo(DSMC) method is employed to calculate the etch rate on Al wafer. The etchant is assumed to be Cl$_2$. The etching process of an Al wafer in a helicon plasma etcher is examined by simulating molecular collisions of reactant and product. The flow field inside a plasma etch reactor is also simulated by the DSMC method fur a chlorine feed gas flow. The surface reaction on the Al wafer is simply modelled by one-step reaction: 3C1$_2$+2Allongrightarrow1 2AIC1$_3$. The gas flow inside the reactor is compared for six different nozzle locations. It is found that the flow field inside the reactor is affected by the nozzle locations. The Cl$_2$ number density on the wafer decreases as the nozzle location moves toward the side of the reactor. Also, the present numerical results show that the nozzle location 1, which is at the top of the reactor chamber, produces a higher etch rate.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2003.07a
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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.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.188-189
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• 2007

The etching characteristics of $Al_2O_3$ films using the inductively coupled plasma (ICP) was investigated. The etch gas was the mixture of $BCl_3$ and He. The effect of ICP source and bias powers on etch rate and etch selectivity to polycrystalline Si was investigated in the etch process of $Al_2O_3$. The etch rate of $Al_2O_3$ film was 23nm/min when the source power and bias power were 600W and 60W, respectively. The results also indicated that the etch selectivity to polycrystalline Si could not be enhanced to be higher than 1.0 by changing the ICP source power and bias power, under the experimental conditions used in the present work. Based on plasma parameters extracted from Langmuir probe data, the etching mechanism of $Al_2O_3$ film was discussed in detail.