Controlling VUV photon fluxes in pulsed inductively coupled Ar/Cl2 plasmas and potential applications in plasma etching

UV/VUV photon fluxes in plasma materials processing have a variety of effects ranging from producing damage to stimulating synergistic reactions. Although in plasma etching processes, the rate and quality of the feature are typically controlled by the characteristics of the ion flux, to truly optimize these ion and photon driven processes, it is desirable to control the relative fluxes of ions and photons to the wafer. In prior works, it was determined that the ratio of VUV photon to ion fluxes to the substrate in low pressure inductively coupled plasmas (ICPs) sustained in rare gases can be controlled by combinations of pressure and pulse power, while the spectrum of these VUV photons can be tuned by adding additional rare gases to the plasma. In this work, VUV photon and ion fluxes are computationally investigated for Ar/Cl2 ICPs as used in etching of silicon. We found that while the overall ratio of VUV photon flux to ion flux are controlled by pressure and pulse power, by varying the fraction of Cl2 in the mixture, both the ratio of VUV to ion fluxes and the spectrum of VUV photons can be tuned. It was also found that the intensity of VUV emission from Cl(3p44s) can be independently tuned by controlling wall surface conditions. With this ability to control ratios of ion to photon fluxes, photon stimulated processes, as observed in halogen etching of Si, can be tuned to optimize the shape of the etched features.