• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.167-167
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• 2011

Magnetic random access memory (MRAM) is one of the prospective semiconductor memories for next generation. It has the excellent features including nonvolatility, fast access time, unlimited read/write endurance, low operating voltage, and high storage density. MRAM consists of magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) stack and complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS). The MTJ stack is composed of various magnetic materials, metals, and a tunneling barrier layer. For the successful realization of high density MRAM, the etching process of magnetic materials should be developed. Among various magnetic materials, FePt has been used for pinned layer of MTJ stack. The previous etch study of FePt magnetic thin films was carried out using $CH_4/O_2/NH_3$. It reported only the etch characteristics with respect to the variation of RF bias powers. In this study, the etch characteristics of FePt thin films have been investigated using an inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etcher in various etch chemistries containing $CH_4$/Ar and $CH_4/O_2/Ar$ gas mixes. TiN thin film was employed as a hard mask. FePt thin films are etched by varying the gas concentration. The etch characteristics have been investigated in terms of etch rate, etch selectivity and etch profile. Furthermore, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy is applied to elucidate the etch mechanism of FePt thin films in $CH_4$/Ar and $CH_4/O_2/Ar$ chemistries.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.99-101
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• 2000

The fabrication of the submicron size hole has been interesting due to the potential application of the near field optical sensor or liquid metal ion source. The 2 micron size dot array was photolithographically patterned. After formation of the V-groove shape by anisotropic KOH etching, dry oxidation at $1000^{\circ}C$ for 600 minutes was followed. In this procedure, the orientation dependent oxide growth was performed to have an etch-mask for dry etching. The reactive ion etching by the inductively coupled plasma (ICP) system was performed in order to etch ~90 nm $SiO_2$ layer at the bottom of the V-groove and to etch the Si at the bottom. The negative ion energy would enhance the anisotropic etching by the $Cl_2$ gas. After etching, the remaining thickness of the oxide on the Si(111) surface was measured to be ~130 nm by scanning electron microscopy. The etched Si aperture can be used for NSOM sensor.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.15-22
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• 2007

We present the morphological evolution at different source powers in the ion-enhanced etching of GaAs(100) in $BCl_3-Cl_2$ plasma. With little ion bombardment at floating potential, the surface develops <110< ridges and {111} facets, as it does in purely chemical etching. The morphology develops in less than 1 minute and grows bigger over time. The etched surfaces show different morphologies at different source powers with constant pressures of gases. Lowe. source power (100 W) produces poorly developed crystallographic surfaces while higher source power (900 W) produces well developed crystallographic surfaces. This is attributed to the availability of excited reactive species(chlorine atoms) depending on source powers. With more concentration of the reactive species at higher source powers, the surface of GaAs(100) would be a surface that is expected from thermodynamics while the surface morphology would be determined by sputtering in the lack of reactive species. Statistical analysis of the surfaces, based on scaling theory, revealed two spatial exponents: one(smaller than one) is formed by atomic scale mechanisms, the other(larger than one) is formed by larger scale mechanisms which is believed to develop facets.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.250-261
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• 2007

We present the morphological evolution at different source powers in the ion-enhanced etching of GaAs(100) in $BCl_3-Cl_2$ plasma. With little ion bombardment at floating potential, the surface develops <110> ridges and {111} facets, as it does in purely chemical etching. Higher source power (900 W) produces well developed crystallographic surfaces while lower source power (100 W) produces poorly developed crystallographic surfaces. This is attributed to the availability of excited reactive species (chlorine atoms) depending on source powers. With more concentration of the reactive species at higher source powers, the surface of GaAs(100) would be a surface that is expected from thermodynamics while the surface morphology would be determined by sputtering in the lack of reactive species. Statistical analysis of the surfaces, based on scaling theory, revealed two spatial exponents: one (smaller than one) is formed by atomic scale mechanisms, the other (larger than one) is formed by larger scale mechanisms which is believed to develop facets. When samples are biased, the surfaces experienced bombardment resulting in suppression of ridge formation at high source power and islands formation at low source power.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 1998.06a
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• pp.375-378
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• 1998

Platinum thin film which hardly form volatile compounds with any reactive gas at normal process temperature was etched in inductive coupled BCl$_{3}$/Cl$_{2}$ plasma. The etch rate of platinum thin film increased with increasing Cl$_{2}$/(Cl$_{2}$ + BCl$_{3}$) ratio. That reasoned increasing of ion current density.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.244-250
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• 2008

An inductively coupled plasma etching process to replace an existing slower rate reactive ion etching process for $60{\mu}m$ diameter via-holes using Cl2/BCl3 gases has been investigated. Process pressure and platen power were varied at a constant ICP coil power to reproduce the RIE etched $200{\mu}m$ deep via profile, at high etch rate. Desired etch profile was obtained at 40 m Torr pressure, 950 W coil power, 90W platen power with an etch rate ${\sim}4{\mu}m$/min and via etch yield >90% over a 3-inch wafer, using $24{\mu}m$ thick photoresist mask. The etch uniformity and reproducibility obtained for the process were better than 4%. The metallized via-hole dc resistance measured was ${\sim}0.5{\Omega}$ and via inductance value measured was $\sim$83 pH.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics D
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• v.36D no.2
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• pp.41-47
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• 1999

In this paper, we report 3D-simulations of a plasma etching process by employing cell-removal algorithm takes into account the mask shadow effect os well as spillover errors. The developed simulator haas an input interface to take not only an analytic form but a Monte Carlo distribution of the ions. The graphic user interface(GUI) was also built into the simulator for UNIX environment. To demonstrate the capability of 3D-SURFILER(SURface proFILER), we have simulated for a typical contact hole structure with 36,000($30{\times}40{\times}30$) cells, which takes about 20 minutes with 10 Mbytes memory on sun ultra sparc 1. as an exemplary case, we calculated the etch profile during the reactive ion etching(RIE) of a contact hole wherein the aspect ratio is 1.57. Furthermore, we also simulated the dependence of a damage parameter and the evolution of topography as a function of the chamber pressure and the incident ion flux.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.309-312
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• 2004

Two-dimensionally arrayed nanocolumn lattices were fabricated by using double-exposure laser holographic method. The hexagonal lattice was formed by rotating the sample with 60 degree while the square lattice by 90 degree before the second laser-exposure. The size and period of nanocolumns could be controlled accurately from 125 to 145 nm in diameter and 220 to 290 nm in period for square lattice by changing the incident angle of laser beam. The reactive ion etching for a typical time of 30 min using CH$_4$/H$_2$ plasma enhanced the aspect-ratio by more than 1.5 with a slight increase of the bottom width of columns.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.4 no.5
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• pp.10-14
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• 2003

A low-cost, large area, random, maskless texturing scheme independent of crystal orientation is expected to have significant impact on terrestrial photovoltaic technology. We investigated silicon surface microstructures formed by reactive ion etching (R IE) in Multi-Hollow cathode system. Desirable texturing effect has been achieved when radio-frequency (rf) power of about 20 Watt per one hollow cathode glow is applied for our RF Multi -Hollow cathode system. The black silicon etched surface shows almost zero reflectance in the visible region as well as in near IR region. The etched silicon surface is covered by columnar microstructures with diameters from 50 to 100 nm and depth of about 500 nm. We have successfully achieved 11.7 % efficiency of mono-crystalline silicon solar cell and 10.2 % for multi-crystalline silicon solar cell.

• 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.