A comparative study of capacitively coupled HBr/He, HBr/Ar plasmas for etching applications : numerical investigation by fluid model

Gul, Banat; Aman-ur-Rehman

doi:10.1063/1.4934922

Title

A comparative study of capacitively coupled HBr/He, HBr/Ar plasmas for etching applications : numerical investigation by fluid model

Author

Gul, Banat

Aman-ur-Rehman

Abstract

Fluid model has been applied to perform a comparative study of hydrogen bromide (HBr)/He and HBr/Ar capacitively coupled plasma discharges that are being used for anisotropic etching process. This model has been used to identify the most dominant species in HBr based plasmas. Our simulation results show that the neutral species like H and Br, which are the key player in chemical etching, have bell shape distribution, while ions like HBr+, Br+, which play a dominant rule in the physical etching, have double humped distribution and show peaks near electrodes. It was found that the dilution of HBr by Ar and/or He results in an increase in electron density and electron temperature, which results in more ionization and dissociation and hence higher densities of neutral and charged species can be achieved. The ratio of positive ion flux to the neutral flux increases with an increase in additive gas fraction. Compare to HBr/He plasma, the HBr/Ar plasma shows a maximum change in the ion density and flux and hence the etching rate can be considered in the ion-assisted and in the ion-flux etch regime in HBr/Ar discharge. The densities of electron and other dominant species in HBr/Ar plasma are higher than those of HBr/He plasma. The densities and fluxes of the active neutrals and positive ions for etching and subsequently chemical etching versus physical sputtering in HBr/Ar and HBr/He plasmas discharge can be controlled by tuning gas mixture ratio and the desire etching can be achieved. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.

Language

English

Source (journal)

Physics of plasmas. - Woodbury, N.Y.

Publication

Woodbury, N.Y. : 2015

ISSN

1070-664X

DOI

10.1063/1.4934922

Volume/pages

22 :10 (2015) , 9 p.