RF Driven Plasmas in Semiconductor Manufacturing

Summary form only given. This talk will give a biased overview of the application of RF driven plasmas to semiconductor manufacturing. The advances in understanding plasma physics in such applications has occurred through the collaboration of many disciplines: plasma modeling/simulation, plasma diagnostics, basic plasma physics, and RF engineering. The evolution of sources will be discussed, from straight capacitively coupled plasmas, to inductively coupled plasmas, to the latest development of dual frequency capacitively coupled plasmas. Even some contributions from the often overlooked field of DC plasmas will be discussed. Some case studies from these fields will be discussed in depth. Many plasma physicists enjoy their studies due to the richness of plasma phenomena. However, semiconductor manufacturing applications rely on making the plasmas as "boring" as possible: plasma uniformity over the workpiece, and repeatabilitv are key. It will be shown that even in these "boring" plasmas, it is possible to uncover interesting phenomena.