Plasma etching and feature evolution of organic low-k material by using VicAddress Original Research Article

Plasma process is a highly selective technique exploiting the individual or mixed function of positive ions, electrons, neutral radicals, and photons produced by low temperature plasmas. For example, dielectric etching is a competitive process among charging, etching and deposition at each of local positions of a geometrical structure exposed to reactive plasmas. Plasma etching is adjacent to the damage, such as charging, thermal heating, and UV-irradiation, caused by these elements. VicAddress (Vertically integrated computer aided design for device processes) developed in our laboratory has a threefold frame, including two-dimensional (2D) plasma structure, particle sheath kinetics, and particle-wafer interaction, in the multi-scale system of the plasma process. We will discuss the numerical procedure of a plasma surface interaction for etching. Time-averaged 2D plasma in a two-frequency capacitively coupled plasma reactor of several cm in dimension is connected to the wafer surface having a pattern of a size of sub-micron. The influence of deposition on etching of organic low-k is numerically discussed in terms of the feature profile evolution.