Investigation into SiO₂ Etching Characteristics Using Fluorocarbon Capacitively Coupled Plasmas: Etching with Radical/Ion Flux-Controlled

Abstract

SiO2 etching characteristics were investigated in detail. Patterned SiO2 was etched using radio-frequency capacitively coupled plasma with pulse modulation in a mixture of argon and fluorocarbon gases. Through plasma diagnostic techniques, plasma parameters (radical and electron density, self-bias voltage) were also measured. In this work, we identified an etching process window, where the etching depth is a function of the radical flux. Then, pulse-off time was varied in the two extreme cases: the lowest and the highest radical fluxes. It was observed that increasing pulse-off time resulted in an enhanced etching depth and the reduced etching depth respectively. This opposing trend was attributed to increasing neutral to ion flux ratio by extending pulse-off time within different etching regimes.

Keywords

• pulsed plasma
• SiO₂ etching
• high aspect ratio etching
• capacitively coupled plasmas