Monitor of the Chamber Wall Condition in Plasma Etching Process by APM Sensor

Summary form only given. We developed a novel acoustic plate mode (APM) sensor for application in monitoring chamber wall condition of plasma based semiconductor fabrication tools, such plasma etchers or PECVDs. In semiconductor plasma processing, process results are determined by plasma properties which have been shown to be very sensitive to chamber wall surface condition. The dominate mechanism is that the surface recombination coefficient of reactive species will be changed with the surface condition, resulting in the changes of relative concentration of species in the plasma. Thus, it is important to monitor the chamber wall surface condition in order to maximize the yield of plasma based processes. This paper discusses the operating principle of the APM sensor and experimental results are also shown.