Please cite the original version: Perros, Alexander & Bosund, Markus & Sajavaara, Timo & Laitinen, Mikko & Sainiemi, Lauri & Huhtio, Teppo & Lipsanen, Harri. 2012. Plasma etch characteristics of aluminum nitride mask layers grown by low-temperature plasma enhanced atomic layer deposition in SF6 based plasmas. Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A: Vacuum, Surfaces, and Films. Volume 30, Issu...

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 ...

The influence of reactor wall conditions on the characteristics of high density fluorocarbon plasma etch processes has been studied. Results obtained during the etching of oxide, nitride, and silicon in an inductively coupled plasma source fed with various feedgases, such as CHF3 , C3F6 , and C3F6/H2 , indicate that the reactor wall temperature is an important parameter in the etch process. Ade...

Understanding plasma etch damage on near-surface nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers in diamond is essential for preserving NV emission in photonic structures and magnetometry systems. We have developed a methodology to compare the optical properties of ensemble NV centers initially 70 nm from the surface brought closer to the surface through etching with O2 plasmas in three different reactors. We em...

Anisotropic etching, enabled by energetic ion bombardment, is one of the primary roles of plasma–assisted materials processing for microelectronics fabrication. One challenge in plasma etching is being able to control the ion energy-angular distributions (IEADs) from the presheath to the surface of the wafer which is necessary for maintaining the critical dimension of features. Dual frequency c...

This article first presents quasi- in situ XPS measurements on Si 3 N 4 and a-Si samples after exposure to an SiF /O 2 plasma at different cryogenic temperatures. A behavior is observed between the two materials −65 °C, which has led development of a time-multiplexed process for nanoscale etching. study clearly shows possibility switch from deposition regime etching by decreasing temperature. T...

Experiments were performed to examine the efficiency of surfactants to remove multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) from silicon substrates with nano and microscaled features. In the first set of experiments, nanoscale features were induced on silicon wafers using SF6 and O2 plasma. In the second set, well-defined microscale topological features were induced on silicon wafers using photo litho...

To investigate the electrical changes observed at plasma etching endpoints, experiments were performed in an inductively coupled, rf-biased reactor, during CF4/Ar plasma etches of silicon dioxide films on silicon substrates. The rf bias current, voltage, and impedance were measured vs. time during etching. Simultaneously, a Langmuir probe measured the electron and ion densities, ion current den...

A commercial Trikon Technologies, Inc. Pinnacle 8000 helicon source plasma system for semiconductor etching was characterized with a radio frequency compensated Langmuir probe. The plasma parameters, including electron temperature, ion and electron density were measured with changes in the process conditions. The coil current ratios for constant magnetic fields were varied to demonstrate flexib...

Wafer and die level uniformity effects in Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DRIE) are quantitatively modeled and characterized. A two-level etching model has been developed to predict non-uniformities in high-speed rotating microstructures. The separation of wafer level and die level effects is achieved by sequentially etching wafers with uniformly distributed holes. The wafer level loadings range fro...