Etching with atomic precision by using low electron temperature plasma

There has been a steady increase in sub-nm precision requirement for many critical plasma etching processes in the semiconductor industry. In addition to high selectivity and low controllable etch rate, an important requirement of atomic precision etch processes is no (or minimal) damage to the rema...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of physics. D, Applied physics Applied physics, 2017-07, Vol.50 (27), p.274003
Main Authors: Dorf, L, Wang, J-C, Rauf, S, Monroy, G A, Zhang, Y, Agarwal, A, Kenney, J, Ramaswamy, K, Collins, K
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
atomic layer etch
atomic precision etch
low damage etch
low electron temperature plasma
low ion energy plasma
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:There has been a steady increase in sub-nm precision requirement for many critical plasma etching processes in the semiconductor industry. In addition to high selectivity and low controllable etch rate, an important requirement of atomic precision etch processes is no (or minimal) damage to the remaining material surface. It has traditionally not been possible to avoid damage in conventional radio-frequency (RF) plasma processing systems, even during layer-by-layer or 'atomic layer' etch. To meet these increasingly stringent requirements, it is necessary to have an accurate control over ion energy and ion/radical composition during plasma processing. In this work, a new plasma etch system designed to facilitate atomic precision plasma processing is presented. An electron sheet beam parallel to the substrate surface is used to produce a plasma in this system. This plasma has a significantly lower electron temperature Te ~ 0.3 eV and ion energy Ei  
ISSN:0022-3727
1361-6463
DOI:10.1088/1361-6463/aa7357