Mechanisms for plasma cryogenic etching of porous materials

Abstract

Porous materials are commonly used in microelectronics, as they can meet the demand for continuously shrinking electronic feature dimensions. However, they are facing severe challenges in plasma etching, due to plasma induced damage. In this paper, we present both the plasma characteristics and surface processing during the etching of porous materials. We explain how the damage occurs in the porous material during plasma etching for a wide range of chuck temperatures, and the responsible mechanism for plasma damage-free etching at cryogenic temperature, by a combination of experiments and numerical modeling.

Capacitive electrical asymmetry effect in an inductively coupled plasma reactor

“…This chemistry reaction set has been validated by comparison with experiments, and good agreement was reached between the simulation results and the experimental data in Ref. [34].…”

“…An overview of the different plasma species included in the model is presented in table 1. The gas phase chemistry reaction set between the C 4 F 8 and SF 6 based plasma species (including molecules, radicals and ions, as well as the electron impact reactions), is summarized in our previous work [34], and is not repeated here. This chemistry reaction set has been validated by comparison with experiments, and good agreement was reached between the simulation results and the experimental data in [34].…”

Micro-discharge in tortuous pores: ‘splitting-quenching’ of primary ionization wave and the role of pre-ionization

“…catalysis [6][7][8][9] and plasma activated water [10,11]. In the special fields of chip etching [12][13][14][15] and outdoor insulation recovery of power system [16][17][18], plasma will also inevitably interact with porous materials, the physicochemical process involved will be very different from that with the solid materials, and thus has rapidly become a research issue in recent years.…”

Self-organization of Coulomb balls in glow DC discharge in neon at cryogenic temperature

“…Recently, owing to needs of microelectronics and the necessity of obtaining ultrapure materials, novel technologies employing low-temperature plasma [1], including the cryogenic one [2,3], are being developed. Glow discharge plasma [4], including dusty plasma [5], is employed in various technical installations for plasma assisted deposition, etching, surface modification [2,3,[6][7][8][9][10], as well in processes of synthesis in plasma [11], including those at low and cryogenic temperatures [2,4,6,7].…”