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Mar 2013

Volume 31, Issue 2, Articles (02xxxx)

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J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 31, 020605 (2013); http://dx.doi.org/10.1116/1.4791669 (5 pages)

Peter J. Cumpson, Jose F. Portoles, and Naoko Sano
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Study on the etching characteristics of amorphous carbon layer in oxygen plasma with carbonyl sulfide

Jong Kyu Kim, Sung Il Cho, Nam Gun Kim, Myung S. Jhon, Kyung Suk Min, Chan Kyu Kim, and Geun Young Yeom

J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 31, 021301 (2013); http://dx.doi.org/10.1116/1.4780122 (7 pages)

Online Publication Date: 28 January 2013

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Carbonyl sulfide (COS) was added to oxygen as the additive etch gas for etching of amorphous carbon layers (ACL), and its effect on the etching characteristics of ACLs as the etch mask for high aspect ratio contact SiO2 etching was investigated. When a 50 nm amorphous carbon hole was etched in a gas mixture of O2 + 5% COS, not only did the etch profile of the ACL change more anisotropically but also the top/bottom opening ratio of the etch profile was improved by about 37% compared to those etched without COS. The improved ACL etch characteristics were related to the sidewall passivation of the amorphous carbon hole by the carbon sulfide related layer during the etching of the ACL. The distortion of the amorphous carbon hole was also reduced by about 6% due to the uniform deposition of the carbon sulfide related layer on the sidewall of the amorphous carbon hole. This uniform deposition improved the etch profile and opening ratio of the amorphous carbon hole, ultimately resulting in the enhanced contact oxide etching characteristics as evidenced by 5% improvement in the contact oxide opening and 20% improvement in the mask etch selectivity during the etching of an oxide having 20:1 high aspect ratio.
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81.65.Cf Surface cleaning, etching, patterning
81.65.Rv Passivation
81.05.U- Carbon/carbon-based materials
52.77.Bn Etching and cleaning
61.43.Er Other amorphous solids

Low ion energy RF reactor using an array of plasmas through a grounded grid

Michaël Chesaux, Alan A. Howling, Christoph Hollenstein, Didier Dominé, and Ulrich Kroll

J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 31, 021302 (2013); http://dx.doi.org/10.1116/1.4790423 (8 pages)

Online Publication Date: 6 February 2013

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A reactor using localized remote plasma in a grid electrode is presented in this study. The aim is to reduce the ion bombardment energy inherent in RF capacitively coupled parallel plate reactors used to deposit large area thin film silicon solar cells. High ion bombardment energy could cause defects in silicon layers and deteriorate electrical interfaces, therefore, by reducing the ion bombardment energy, lower defect density might be obtained. In this study, the low ion bombardment energy results from the reactor design. By inserting a grounded grid close to the RF electrode of a parallel plate reactor, the electrode area asymmetry is increased while retaining the lateral uniformity required for large area deposition. This asymmetry causes a strong negative self-bias voltage, which reduces the time-averaged plasma potential and thus lowers the ion bombardment energy. In addition to the self-bias, the time evolution of plasma light emission and plasma potential RF waveform are also affected by the grid, thereby further reducing the time-averaged plasma potential and ion bombardment energy. Finally, a good correlation between the measured time-averaged plasma potential and measured low ion bombardment energy is found in a broad range of RF voltages.
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52.50.Dg Plasma sources
52.77.Dq Plasma-based ion implantation and deposition
52.80.Pi High-frequency and RF discharges

Noninvasive, real-time measurements of plasma parameters via optical emission spectroscopy

Shicong Wang, Amy E. Wendt, John B. Boffard, Chun C. Lin, Svetlana Radovanov, and Harold Persing

J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 31, 021303 (2013); http://dx.doi.org/10.1116/1.4792671 (13 pages)

Online Publication Date: 22 February 2013

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Plasma process control applications require acquisition of diagnostic data at a rate faster than the characteristic timescale of perturbations to the plasma. Diagnostics based on optical emission spectroscopy of intense emission lines permit rapid noninvasive measurements with low-resolution (∼1 nm), fiber-coupled spectrographs, which are included on many plasma process tools for semiconductor processing. Here the authors report on rapid analysis of Ar emissions with such a system to obtain electron temperatures, electron densities, and metastable densities in argon and argon/mixed-gas (Ar/N2, Ar/O2, Ar/H2) inductively coupled plasmas. Accuracy of the results (compared to measurements made by Langmuir probe and white-light absorption spectroscopy) are typically better than ±15% with a time resolution of 0.1 s, which is more than sufficient to capture the transient behavior of many processes, limited only by the time response of the spectrograph used.
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52.70.Kz Optical (ultraviolet, visible, infrared) measurements
52.25.Os Emission, absorption, and scattering of electromagnetic radiation
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