Kartik Ramaswamy

Inductively Coupled Pulsed Plasmas in the Presence of Synchronous Pulsed Substrate Bias for Robust, Reliable, and Fine Conductor Etching

Inductively coupled pulsed plasmas in the presence of synchronous pulsed substrate bias are characterized in a commercial plasma etching reactor for conductor etching. The synchronous pulsed plasma characteristics are evaluated through the following: 1) Ar-based Langmuir probe diagnostics; 2) Ar/Cl2 plasma modeling utilizing the hybrid plasma equipment model and the Monte Carlo feature model for the investigation of feature profile evolutions; 3) basic etching characteristics such as average etch rate and uniformity; 4) sub-50-nm Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) basic etching performance and profile control; and 5) charge damage evaluation. It is demonstrated that one can control the etching uniformity and profile in advanced gate etching, and reduce the leakage current by varying the synchronous pulsed plasma parameters. Moreover, it is shown that synchronous pulsing has the promise of significantly reducing the electron shading effects compared with source pulsing mode and continuous-wave mode. The synchronous pulsed plasma paves the way to a wider window of operating conditions, which allows new plasma etching processes to address the large number of challenges emerging in the 45-nm and below technologies.

Control of plasma uniformity in a capacitive discharge using two very high frequency power sources

Very high frequency (VHF) capacitively coupled plasma (CCP) discharges are being employed for dielectric etching due to VHF’s various benefits including low plasma potential, high electron density, and controllable dissociation. If the plasma is generated using multiple VHF sources, one can expect that the interaction between the sources can be important in determining the plasma characteristics. The effects of VHF mixing on plasma characteristics, especially its spatial profile, are investigated using both computational modeling and diagnostic experiments. The two-dimensional plasma model includes the full set of Maxwell equations in their potential formulation. The plasma simulation results show that electron density peaks at the center of the chamber at 180 MHz due to the standing electromagnetic wave. Electrostatic effects at the electrode edges tend to get stronger at lower VHFs such as 60 MHz. When the two rf sources are used simultaneously and power at 60 MHz is gradually increased, the ion flux be...

Effects of interelectrode gap on high frequency and very high frequency capacitively coupled plasmas

Capacitively coupled plasma (CCP) discharges using high frequency (HF) and very high frequency (VHF) sources are widely used for dielectric etching in the semiconductor industry. A two-dimensional fluid plasma model is used to investigate the effects of interelectrode gap on plasma spatial characteristics of both HF and VHF CCPs. The plasma model includes the full set of Maxwell’s equations in their potential formulation. The peak in plasma density is close to the electrode edge at 13.5MHz for a small interelectrode gap. This is due to electric field enhancement at the electrode edge. As the gap is increased, the plasma produced at the electrode edge diffuses to the chamber center and the plasma becomes more uniform. At 180MHz, where electromagnetic standing wave effects are strong, the plasma density peaks at the chamber center at large interelectrode gap. As the interelectrode gap is decreased, the electron density increases near the electrode edge due to inductive heating and electrostatic electron heating, which makes the plasma more uniform in the interelectrode region.Capacitively coupled plasma (CCP) discharges using high frequency (HF) and very high frequency (VHF) sources are widely used for dielectric etching in the semiconductor industry. A two-dimensional fluid plasma model is used to investigate the effects of interelectrode gap on plasma spatial characteristics of both HF and VHF CCPs. The plasma model includes the full set of Maxwell’s equations in their potential formulation. The peak in plasma density is close to the electrode edge at 13.5MHz for a small interelectrode gap. This is due to electric field enhancement at the electrode edge. As the gap is increased, the plasma produced at the electrode edge diffuses to the chamber center and the plasma becomes more uniform. At 180MHz, where electromagnetic standing wave effects are strong, the plasma density peaks at the chamber center at large interelectrode gap. As the interelectrode gap is decreased, the electron density increases near the electrode edge due to inductive heating and electrostatic electron hea...

Synchronous Pulse Plasma Operation upon Source and Bias Radio Frequencys for Inductively Coupled Plasma for Highly Reliable Gate Etching Technology

Synchronous pulse operation upon both source and bias RFs for inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etching system, having both dynamic matching networks and RF frequency-sweeping to ensure the lowest RF reflected power, is introduced for the first time. A superior performance of synchronous pulse operation to conventional continuous wave (cw) as well as source pulse operations is confirmed through plasma diagnostics by using Langmuir probe, plasma simulation by using hybrid plasma equipment model (HPEM) and etching performance. Significant reduction of RF power reflection during pulse operation as well as improvement of 35 nm gate critical dimension (CD) uniformity for sub-50 nm dynamic random access memory (DRAM) are achieved by adapting synchronous pulse plasma etching technology. It is definitely expected that synchronous pulse plasma system would have a great ability from a perspective of robustness on fabrication site, excellent gate CD controllability and minimization of plasma induced damage (PID) related device performance degradation.

Electromagnetic Modeling of Plasma Etch Chamber for Semiconductor Microchip Fabrication

In the plasma etch chamber used to fabricate semiconductor microchips, maintain- ing the symmetry and uniformity of the electric fleld in the plasma discharge region is critical. Very-high-frequency (VHF) RF sources are attractive for such applications as they improve the e-ciency of plasma generation. Electromagnetic efiects become important at these frequencies, and etch chamber design requires careful investigation of the electromagnetic fleld spatial struc- ture in the chamber. In this paper, we apply the flnite-difierence time-domain (FDTD) method to examine various electromagnetic efiects in the plasma etch chamber and investigate strategies for improved chamber design. These efiects include the standing wave efiects and asymmetric fleld distributions that can be caused by asymmetric RF power feed conflgurations. The FDTD method is formulated in both cylindrical and Cartesian coordinate systems to facilitate modeling of rotationally symmetric chamber and asymmetric RF feed structures. The electric fleld dis- tribution generated by various RF feed conflgurations is studied at difierent VHF frequencies. Based on the FDTD simulations, we have been able to identify a variety of design approaches for ensuring electric fleld symmetry and uniformity. When the electromagnetic efiects become signiflcant, it is indispensable to fully understand the electrodynamic behavior of the RF flelds in the etch chambers because any nonuniformity of the electric flelds in the plasma region would directly have an impact on the etch uniformity and quality. In this paper, we apply the FDTD technique (2) to model the RF wave behavior in the chamber. We particularly pay attention to the electric fleld distribution at the wafer level and the corresponding electromagnetic efiects at very high frequency. The FDTD method is formulated in both cylindrical and Cartesian coordinate systems to facilitate modeling of rotationally symmetric chamber and asymmetric RF feed structures. We couple the FDTD formulation with the CPML (2) absorbing boundary conditions to accurately simulate the RF power delivery via a coaxial line. 2. COMPUTATIONAL METHOD DESCRIPTION To make the computational model conformal to the geometrical features in the cylindrical etching chamber, we formulate the FDTD method in the cylindrical coordinate system. In the cylindrical coordinate system, the Maxwells curl equations for linear, isotropic, nondispersive materials can

Assignment of Axial Wavenumber in a Plasma Absorption Probe

A plasma absorption probe (PAP) developed in previous studies is a novel plasma diagnosis, which is adopted even in a reactive gas. In the previous studies, higher series of measured absorptions were attributed to the higher-order azimuthal modes of plasma surface waves, showing a poor agreement with the theoretical prediction. In this theoretical note, the data from the previous studies are processed by considering that the absorptions are caused by the higher-order axial modes of plasma surface waves. The treated data show a good agreement with the theory within the accuracy of measurement.

Atomic precision etch using a low-electron temperature plasma

Sub-nm precision is increasingly being required of many critical plasma etching processes in the semiconductor industry. Accurate control over ion energy and ion/radical composition is needed during plasma processing to meet these stringent requirements. Described in this work is a new plasma etch system which has been designed with the requirements of atomic precision plasma processing in mind. In this system, an electron sheet beam parallel to the substrate surface produces a plasma with an order of magnitude lower electron temperature Te (~ 0.3 eV) and ion energy Ei (< 3 eV without applied bias) compared to conventional radio-frequency (RF) plasma technologies. Electron beam plasmas are characterized by higher ion-to-radical fraction compared to RF plasmas, so a separate radical source is used to provide accurate control over relative ion and radical concentrations. Another important element in this plasma system is low frequency RF bias capability which allows control of ion energy in the 2-50 eV range. Presented in this work are the results of etching of a variety of materials and structures performed in this system. 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 RF plasma processing systems, even during atomic layer etch. The experiments for Si etch in Cl2 based plasmas in the aforementioned etch system show that damage can be minimized if the ion energy is kept below 10 eV. Layer-by-layer etch of Si is also demonstrated in this etch system using electrical and gas pulsing.