Dry etching of ITO by magnetic pole enhanced inductively coupled plasma for display and biosensing devices

The dry etching of indium tin oxide (ITO) layers deposited on glass substrates was investigated in a high density inductively coupled plasma (ICP) source. This innovative low pressure plasma source uses a magnetic core in order to concentrate the electromagnetic energy on the plasma and thus provide...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied surface science 2006-03, Vol.252 (10), p.3861-3870
Main Authors: Meziani, T., Colpo, P., Lambertini, V., Ceccone, G., Rossi, F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Atomic force microscopy
Condensed matter: electronic structure, electrical, magnetic, and optical properties
Condensed matter: structure, mechanical and thermal properties
Cross-disciplinary physics: materials science
rheology
Exact sciences and technology
Indium tin oxide
Ion etching
Physics
Plasma processing
Sputtering
X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy
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Summary:The dry etching of indium tin oxide (ITO) layers deposited on glass substrates was investigated in a high density inductively coupled plasma (ICP) source. This innovative low pressure plasma source uses a magnetic core in order to concentrate the electromagnetic energy on the plasma and thus provides for higher plasma density and better uniformity. Different gas mixtures were tested containing mainly hydrogen, argon and methane. In Ar/H 2 mixtures and at constant bias voltage (−100 V), the etch rate shows a linear dependence with input power varying the same way as the ion density, which confirms the hypothesis that the etching process is mainly physical. In CH 4/H 2 mixtures, the etch rate goes through a maximum for 10% CH 4 indicating a participation of the radicals to the etching process. However, the etch rate remains quite low with this type of gas mixture (around 10 nm/min) because the etching mechanism appears to be competing with a deposition process. With CH 4/Ar mixtures, a similar feature appeared but the etch rate was much higher, reaching 130 nm/min at 10% of CH 4 in Ar. The increase in etch rate with the addition of a small quantity of methane indicates that the physical etching process is enhanced by a chemical mechanism. The etching process was monitored by optical emission spectroscopy that appeared to be a valuable tool for endpoint detection.
ISSN:0169-4332
1873-5584
DOI:10.1016/j.apsusc.2005.06.010