On Relationships between Gas-Phase Chemistry and Reactive Ion Etching Kinetics for Silicon-Based Thin Films (SiC, SiO2 and SixNy) in Multi-Component Fluorocarbon Gas Mixtures
- Authors
- Efremov, Alexander; Lee, Byung Jun; Kwon, Kwang-Ho
- Issue Date
- 3월-2021
- Publisher
- MDPI
- Keywords
- fluorocarbon gas plasma; etching kinetics; etching mechanism; plasma parameters; active species; polymerization; ion-assisted chemical reaction; effective reaction probability; etching yield
- Citation
- MATERIALS, v.14, no.6
- Indexed
- SCIE
SCOPUS
- Journal Title
- MATERIALS
- Volume
- 14
- Number
- 6
- URI
- https://scholar.korea.ac.kr/handle/2021.sw.korea/128523
- DOI
- 10.3390/ma14061432
- ISSN
- 1996-1944
- Abstract
- This work summarizes the results of our previous studies related to investigations of reactive ion etching kinetics and mechanisms for widely used silicon-based materials (SiC, SiO2, and SixNy) as well as for the silicon itself in multi-component fluorocarbon gas mixtures. The main subjects were the three-component systems composed either by one fluorocarbon component (CF4, C4F8, CHF3) with Ar and O-2 or by two fluorocarbon components with one additive gas. The investigation scheme included plasma diagnostics by Langmuir probes and model-based analysis of plasma chemistry and heterogeneous reaction kinetics. The combination of these methods allowed one (a) to figure out key processes which determine the steady-state plasma parameters and densities of active species; (b) to understand relationships between processing conditions and basic heterogeneous process kinetics; (c) to analyze etching mechanisms in terms of process-condition-dependent effective reaction probability and etching yield; and (d) to suggest the set gas-phase-related parameters (fluxes and flux-to-flux ratios) to control the thickness of the fluorocarbon polymer film and the change in the etching/polymerization balance. It was shown that non-monotonic etching rates as functions of gas mixing ratios may result from monotonic but opposite changes in F atoms flux and effective reaction probability. The latter depends either on the fluorocarbon film thickness (in high-polymerizing and oxygen-less gas systems) or on heterogeneous processes with a participation of O atoms (in oxygen-containing plasmas). It was suggested that an increase in O-2 fraction in a feed gas may suppress the effective reaction probability through decreasing amounts of free adsorption sites and oxidation of surface atoms.
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Collections - Graduate School > Department of Control and Instrumentation Engineering > 1. Journal Articles
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