• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.1 no.3
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• pp.14-17
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• 2000

Giga bit dynamic random access memory(DRAM) requires the capacitor of high dielectric films. Some metal oxides films have been proposed as the dielectric material . And Pt is one of the most promising electrode materials. However very little has been done in developing the etching technologoy Pt film. Therefore, it is the first priority to develop the technology for plasma etching of Pt film. In this study, the dry etching of Pt film was investigated in Inductively Coupled Plasma(ICP) etching system with Cl$_2$/Ar and HBr/Cl$_2$/Ar gas mixing. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) was used in analysis of sidewall residues for the understanding of etching mechanism. We found the etch residues on the pattern sidewall is mainly Pt-Pt, Pt-Cl and Pt-Br compounds, Etch profile was observed by Scanning Electron Spectroscopy(SEM) . The etch rate of Pt film at 10%, Cl$_2$/90% Ar gas mixing ration was higher than at 100%. Ar. Addition of HBr to Cl$_2$/Ar as an etching gas led to generally higher selectivity to SiO$_2$. And the etch residues were reduced at 5% HBr/5% Cl$_2$/90% Ar gas mixing ration. These pages provide you with an examples of the layout and style which we wish you to adopt during the preparation of your paper, Make the width of abstract to be 14cm.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.08a
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• pp.80-81
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• 2012

Recently, one of the critical issues in the etching processes of the nanoscale devices is to achieve ultra-high aspect ratio contact (UHARC) profile without anomalous behaviors such as sidewall bowing, and twisting profile. To achieve this goal, the fluorocarbon plasmas with major advantage of the sidewall passivation have been used commonly with numerous additives to obtain the ideal etch profiles. However, they still suffer from formidable challenges such as tight limits of sidewall bowing and controlling the randomly distorted features in nanoscale etching profile. Furthermore, the absence of the available plasma simulation tools has made it difficult to develop revolutionary technologies to overcome these process limitations, including novel plasma chemistries, and plasma sources. As an effort to address these issues, we performed a fluorocarbon surface kinetic modeling based on the experimental plasma diagnostic data for silicon dioxide etching process under inductively coupled C4F6/Ar/O2 plasmas. For this work, the SiO2 etch rates were investigated with bulk plasma diagnostics tools such as Langmuir probe, cutoff probe and Quadruple Mass Spectrometer (QMS). The surface chemistries of the etched samples were measured by X-ray Photoelectron Spectrometer. To measure plasma parameters, the self-cleaned RF Langmuir probe was used for polymer deposition environment on the probe tip and double-checked by the cutoff probe which was known to be a precise plasma diagnostic tool for the electron density measurement. In addition, neutral and ion fluxes from bulk plasma were monitored with appearance methods using QMS signal. Based on these experimental data, we proposed a phenomenological, and realistic two-layer surface reaction model of SiO2 etch process under the overlying polymer passivation layer, considering material balance of deposition and etching through steady-state fluorocarbon layer. The predicted surface reaction modeling results showed good agreement with the experimental data. With the above studies of plasma surface reaction, we have developed a 3D topography simulator using the multi-layer level set algorithm and new memory saving technique, which is suitable in 3D UHARC etch simulation. Ballistic transports of neutral and ion species inside feature profile was considered by deterministic and Monte Carlo methods, respectively. In case of ultra-high aspect ratio contact hole etching, it is already well-known that the huge computational burden is required for realistic consideration of these ballistic transports. To address this issue, the related computational codes were efficiently parallelized for GPU (Graphic Processing Unit) computing, so that the total computation time could be improved more than few hundred times compared to the serial version. Finally, the 3D topography simulator was integrated with ballistic transport module and etch reaction model. Realistic etch-profile simulations with consideration of the sidewall polymer passivation layer were demonstrated.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.363-363
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• 2008

The development of dry etching process for sapphire wafer with plasma has been key issues for the opto-electric devices. The challenges are increasing control and obtaining low plasma induced-damage because an unwanted scattering of radiation is caused by the spatial disorder of pattern and variation of surface roughness. The plasma-induced damages during plasma etching process can be classified as impurity contamination of residual etch products or bonding disruption in lattice due to charged particle bombardment. Therefor, fine pattern technology with low damaged etching process and high etch rate are urgently needed. Until now, there are a lot of reports on the etching of sapphire wafer with using $Cl_2$/Ar, $BCl_3$/Ar, HBr/Ar and so on [1]. However, the etch behavior of sapphire wafer have investigated with variation of only one parameter while other parameters are fixed. In this study, we investigated the effect of pressure and other parameters on the etch rate and the selectivity. We selected $BCl_3$ as an etch ant because $BCl_3$ plasmas are widely used in etching process of oxide materials. In plasma, the $BCl_3$ molecule can be dissociated into B radical, $B^+$ ion, Cl radical and $Cl^+$ ion. However, the $BCl_3$ molecule can be dissociated into B radical or $B^+$ ion easier than Cl radical or $Cl^+$ ion. First, we evaluated the etch behaviors of sapphire wafer in $BCl_3$/additive gases (Ar, $N_2,Cl_2$) gases. The behavior of etch rate of sapphire substrate was monitored as a function of additive gas ratio to $BCl_3$ based plasma, total flow rate, r.f. power, d.c. bias under different pressures of 5 mTorr, 10 mTorr, 20 mTorr and 30 mTorr. The etch rates of sapphire wafer, $SiO_2$ and PR were measured with using alpha step surface profiler. In order to understand the changes of radicals, volume density of Cl, B radical and BCl molecule were investigated with optical emission spectroscopy (OES). The chemical states of $Al_2O_3$ thin films were studied with energy dispersive X-ray (EDX) and depth profile anlysis of auger electron spectroscopy (AES). The enhancement of sapphire substrate can be explained by the reactive ion etching mechanism with the competition of the formation of volatile $AlCl_3$, $Al_2Cl_6$ or $BOCl_3$ and the sputter effect by energetic ions.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.79-84
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• 2010

Formation of TSV (Through-Si-Via) with an Au seed layer and Cu filling to the via, simplification of bumping process for three dimensional stacking of Si dice were investigated. In order to produce the via holes, the Si wafer was etched by a DRIE (Deep Reactive Ion Etching) process using $SF_6$ and $C_4F_8$ plasmas alternately. The vias were 40 ${\mu}m$ in diameter, 80 ${\mu}m$ in depth, and were produced by etching for 1.92 ks. On the via side wall, a dielectric layer of $SiO_2$ was formed by thermal oxidation, and an adhesion layer of Ti, and a seed layer of Au were applied by sputtering. Electroplating with pulsed DC was applied to fill the via holes with Cu. The plating condition was at a forward pulse current density of 1000 mA/$dm^2$ for 5 s and a reverse pulse current density of 190 mA/$dm^2$ for 25 s. By using these parameters, sound Cu filling was obtained in the vias with a total plating time of 57.6 ks. Sn bumping was performed on the Cu plugs without lithography process. The bumps were produced on the Si die successfully by the simplified process without serious defect.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.448-448
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• 2010

Magnetic random access memory (MRAM) has made a prominent progress in memory performance and has brought a bright prospect for the next generation nonvolatile memory technologies due to its excellent advantages. Dry etching process of magnetic thin films is one of the important issues for the magnetic devices such as magnetic tunneling junctions (MTJs) based MRAM. CoFeB is a well-known soft ferromagnetic material, of particular interest for magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) and other devices based on tunneling magneto-resistance (TMR), such as spin-transfer-torque MRAM. One particular example is the CoFeB - MgO - CoFeB system, which has already been integrated in MRAM. In all of these applications, knowledge of control over the etching properties of CoFeB is crucial. Recently, transferring the pattern by using milling is a commonly used, although the redeposition of back-sputtered etch products on the sidewalls and the low etch rate of this method are main disadvantages. So the other method which has reported about much higher etch rates of >$50{\AA}/s$ for magnetic multi-layer structures using $Cl_2$/Ar plasmas is proposed. However, the chlorinated etch residues on the sidewalls of the etched features tend to severely corrode the magnetic material. Besides avoiding corrosion, during etching facets format the sidewalls of the mask due to physical sputtering of the mask material. Therefore, in this work, magnetic material such as CoFeB was etched in an ICP etching system using the gases which can be expected to form volatile metallo-organic compounds. As the gases, carbon monoxide (CO) and ammonia ($NH_3$) were used as etching gases to form carbonyl volatiles, and the etched features of CoFeB thin films under by Ta masking material were observed with electron microscopy to confirm etched resolution. And the etch conditions such as bias power, gas combination flow, process pressure, and source power were varied to find out and control the properties of magnetic layer during the process.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.68-75
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• 2002

It is observed the characteristic of the microwave air plasma in the wide range of the operating pressure, 1 mTorr ~ 760 Torr. The microwave air plasma was generated by an AC-type microwave source manufactured with a magnetron taken from a commertial microwave oven and the input power was fixed at 370 W. Characteristics of the plasmas were observed by an injection Langmuir probe and an OES(Optical Emission Spectroscopy). The breakdown electric field is drastically changed at 500 mTorr. For < 500 mTorr, the ratio of the breakdown electric field and the pressure decreased inversely to the pressure, $5.7\times10^4$V/m-Torr.However, the ratio increased linearly as 43 V/m-Torr for the operating pressure, > 500 mTorr. The minimum breakdown electric field was observed about 12. kV/m at 500 mTorr. It corresponds that the input frequency equals to the collision frequency. The effective collision cross section of the air at this pressure was calculated as $9.23\times10^{-l6}\textrm{cm}^2$.The results of the OES measurement revealed that the main ions were composed of the oxygen, argon, and nitrogen for > 500 mTorr. In contrast, only oxygen and argon ions were dominated for < 500 mTorr. ion temperature of oxygen (O(II)) in the air was decreased from about 1.2 eV to 0.5 eV as the pressure increased. Langmuir probe data shows that the plasma density for < 500 mTorr was higher that for > 500 mTorr.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.17-18
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• 2011

Plasma in liquid phase has attracted great attention in the last few years by the wide domain of applications in material processing, decomposition of organic and inorganic chemical compounds and sterilization of water. The plasma in liquid is characterized by three main regions which interact each - other during the plasma operation: the liquid phase, which supply the plasma gas phase with various chemical compounds and ions, the plasma in the gas phase at atmospheric pressure and the interface between these two regions. The most complex region, but extremely interesting from the fundamental, chemical and physical processes which occur here, is the boundary between the liquid phase and the plasma gas phase. In our laboratory, plasma in liquid which behaves as a glow discharge type, is generated by using a bipolar pulsed power supply, with variable pulse width, in the range of 0.5~10 ${\mu}s$ and 10 to 30 kHz repetition rate. Plasma in water and other different solutions was characterized by electrical and optical measurements. Strong emissions of OH and H radicals dominate the optical spectra. Generally water with 500 ${\mu}S/cm$ conductivity has a breakdown voltage around 2 kV, depending on the pulse width and the repetition rate of the power supply. The characteristics of the plasma initiated in ultrapure water between pairs of different materials used for electrodes (W and Ta) were investigated by the time-resolved optical emission and the broad-band absorption spectroscopy. The deexcitation processes of the reactive species formed in the water plasma depend on the electrode material, but have been independent on the polarity of the applied voltage pulses. Recently, Coherent anti-Stokes Raman Spectroscopy method was employed to investigate the chemistry in the liquid phase and at the interface between the gas and the liquid phases of the solution plasma system. The use of the solution plasma allows rapid fabrication of the metal nanoparticles without being necessary the addition of different reducing agents, because plasma in the liquid phase provides a reaction field with a highly excited energy radicals. We successfully synthesized gold nanoparticles using a glow discharge in aqueous solution. Nanoparticles with an average size of less than 10 nm were obtained using chlorauric acid solutions as the metal source. Carbon/Pt hybrid nanostructures have been obtained by treating carbon balls, synthesized in a CVD chamber, with hexachloro- platinum acid in a solution plasma system. The solution plasma was successfully used to remove the template remained after the mesoporous silica synthesis. Surface functionalization of the carbon structures and the silica surface with different chemical groups and nanoparticles, was also performed by processing these materials in the liquid plasma.