Kinetics of Chemical Changes in Phenol Formaldehyde Based Polymeric Films Etched in N2O and O-2 Inductively Coupled Plasmas: A Comparative Study

Abstract

This paper reports on investigation of surface chemistry and etch rates of phenol formaldehyde based polymer after N2O and O-2 radio frequency (RF) inductively coupled plasma processing depend on exposure time. By using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, it was shown that oxygen and nitrogen oxide plasma expositions both lead to similar changes in the chemical composition of polymer. The nitrogen oxide plasma does not lead to any significant increase of concentration of nitrogen-containing groups on the polymer. It was confirmed that the mechanism of photoresist destruction in the N2O discharge was generally identical to that in the O-2 plasma. Furthermore, the surface interactions with the polymer of nitrogen-containing active species could be neglected. (C) 2009 The Japan Society of Applied Physics