Controlled Plasma Characteristics by a Novel Method of Enhanced Inductively Coupled Plasma

초록

The control of the electron energy distribution is important to improve the plasma process quality. A conventional inductively coupled plasma(ICP) source with 13.56MHz power has not been thought to be adequate for low damage sub-half micron patterning process due to higher electron temperature. As the enhanced-ICP(E-ICP), which uses periodic weak axial magnetic field added to a normal ICP source, has shown great improvement in etch characteristics, plasma diagnostics has been carried out to understand the physical reason. The variation of plasma characteristics have been measured according to the E-ICP frequency by a time-resolved analysis of Langmuir probe. Evidences on plasma improvement are reported by the time-resolved analysis of Langmuir probe and optical emission spectroscopy.