Cold atmospheric pressure plasma jets (APPJs) are able to generate chemically reactive species desired for material processing and biomedical applications. A great amount of attention has been devoted to characterizing these APPJ sources and expanding their applications. Less is known on the interaction mechanisms between cold atmospheric pressure plasma and material surfaces. Since both plasma...

The authors report a new, important phenomenon: photo-assisted etching of p-type Si in chlorinecontaining plasmas. This mechanism was discovered in mostly Ar plasmas with a few percent added Cl2, but was found to be even more important in pure Cl2 plasmas. Nearly monoenergetic ion energy distributions (IEDs) were obtained by applying a synchronous dc bias on a “boundary electrode” during the af...

Grass’ formation is the very common defects for via etch process when using a BCl3/Cl2 as basic gases in an inductively coupled plasma (ICP) system. Presence of grass can potentially degrade device performance due to poor metallization coverage. In this study we found that grass formation strongly depends on GaAs surface condition prior to etch. Any surface contaminants, such as photo resist re...

It is essential to etch SiO2 for producing silica glass components, semiconductor devices, and so on. Although wet-etching with hydrogen fluoride (HF) solutions usually employed this purpose, it faces a drawback that microstructures stick during the drying of solution. To overcome problem, we have developed dry-etching technique gaseous HF at high temperatures. In present study, an interesting ...

Gate oxide scaling e€ect on plasma charging damage is discussed for various IC fabrication processes such as metal etching, contact oxide etching, high current ion implantation, and via contact sputtering. Capacitance distortion, stress-induced leakage current, MOSFET characteristics, and circuit performance are used for evaluating the charging damage. We observed that very thin gate oxides are...

The etching of GaN was investigated in an Ar/Cl2 inductively coupled plasma. Optical emission spectroscopy and an ion flux probe were used to obtain insight into the etch mechanisms during processing. Langmuir probe measurements were also used to determine the basic Ar/Cl2 plasma characteristics. Etch rates of 500 nm/min were obtained at relatively low Cl2 fractions of 50%. The dominant emissio...

This article describes results obtained using various plasma and surface diagnostics in a study of inductively coupled fluorocarbon plasmas in which the amount of capacitive coupling was systematically varied. It is found that the plasma density decreases while the electron temperature increases as the amount of capacitive coupling is increased at a constant source power level. The rate at whic...

Coating the inner surfaces of high-powered plasma processing equipment has become crucial for reducing maintenance costs, process drift, and contaminants. The conventionally preferred alumina (Al2O3) coating been replaced with yttria (Y2O3) due to long-standing endurance achieved by fluorine-based etching; however, continuous increase in radio frequency (RF) power necessitates use alternative m...

In this experimental work, by using the method of plasma-chemical etching, we have dealt with the causes of the creation of a distorted layer on the surface of silicon wafers during mechanical machining processes, in addition, the elucidation of connections between the structure of this layer and characteristic parameters of the mechanical strength of these wafers have been studied. Experimenta...