• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.423-429
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• 2005

In this paper, we proposed the fabrication process of the stable e-beam evaporation and the patterning of metals layer on the polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrate. The metal layer was deposited under the various deposition rate, and its effect to the electrical and mechanical properties (e.g.: adhesion-strength of metal layer) was investigated. The influence of surface roughness to the adhesion-strength was also examined via the tape test. Here, we varied the roughness by changing the reactive ion etching (RIE) duration. The electrode patterning was performed through the conventional photolithography and chemical etching process after e-beam deposition of $200{\AA}$ Ti and $1000{\AA}$ Au. As a result, the adhesion strength of metal layer on the PDMS surface was greatly improved by the oxygen plasma treatment. The e-beam evaporation on the PDMS surface is known to create the wavy topography. Here, we found that such wavy patterns do not effect to the electrical and mechanical properties. In conclusion, the metal patterns with minimum $20{\mu}m$ line width was produced well via the our fabrication process, and its electrical conductance was almost similar to the that of metal patterns on the silicon or glass substrates.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2014.02a
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• pp.232.2-232.2
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• 2014

Since its discovery in 2004, graphene, a sp2-hybridized 2-Dimension carbon material, has drawn enormous attention. A variety of approaches have been attempted, such as epitaxial growth from silicon carbide, chemical reduction of graphene oxide and CVD. Among these approaches, the CVD process takes great attention due to its guarantee of high quality and large scale with high yield on various transition metals. After synthesis of graphene on metal substrate, the subsequent transfer process is needed to transfer graphene onto various target substrates, such as bubbling transfer, renewable epoxy transfer and wet etching transfer. However, those transfer processes are hard to control and inevitably induce defects to graphene film. Especially for wet etching transfer, the metal substrate is totally etched away, which is horrendous resources wasting, time consuming, and unsuitable for industry production. Thus, our group develops one-step process to directly grow graphene on glass substrate in plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD). Copper foil is used as catalyst to enhance the growth of graphene, as well as a temperature shield to provide relatively low temperature to glass substrate. The effect of growth time is reported that longer growth time will provide lower sheet resistance and higher VSG flakes. The VSG with conductivity of $800{\Omega}/sq$ and thickness of 270 nm grown on glass substrate can be obtained under 12 min growing time. The morphology is clearly showed by SEM image and Raman spectra that VSG film is composed of base layer of amorphous carbon and vertically arranged graphene flakes.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.19 no.8
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• pp.421-426
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• 2009

We report on the capacitively coupled O2 plasma etching of PMMA and polycarbonate (PC) with a diffusion pump. Plasma process variables were process pressure and CCP power at 5 sccm $O_2$ gas flow rate. Characterization was done in order to analyze etch rate, etch selectivity, surface roughness, and morphology using stylus surface profilometry and scanning electron microscopy. Self bias decreased with increase of process pressure in the range of 25$\sim$180 mTorr. We found an important result for optimum pressure for the highest etch rate of PMMA and PC, which was 60 mTorr. PMMA and PC had etch rates of 0.46 and 0.28 ${\mu}m$/min under pressure conditions, respectively. More specifically, etch rates of the materials increased when the pressure changed from 25 mTorr to 60 mTorr. However, they reduced when the pressure increased further after 60 mTorr. RMS roughnesses of the etched surfaces were in the range of 2.2$\sim$2.9 nm. Etch selectivity of PMMA to a photoresist was $\sim$1.5:1 and that of PC was $\sim$0.9:1. Etch rate constant was about 0.04 ${\mu}m$/minW and 0.02 ${\mu}m$/minW for PMMA and PC, respectively, with the CCP power change at 5 sccm $O_2$ and 40 mTorr process pressure. PC had more erosion on the etched sidewall than PMMA did. The OES data showed that the intensity of the oxygen atomic peak (777.196 nm) proportionally increased with the CCP power.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.408-408
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• 2012

It is well known that magnetic random access memory (MRAM) is nonvolatile memory devices using ferromagnetic materials. MRAM has the merits such as fast access time, unlimited read/write endurance and nonvolatility. Although DRAM has many advantages containing high storage density, fast access time and low power consumption, it becomes volatile when the power is turned off. Owing to the attractive advantages of MRAM, MRAM is being spotlighted as an alternative device in the future. MRAM consists of magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) stack and complementary metal- oxide semiconductor (CMOS). MTJ stacks are composed of various magnetic materials. FePt thin films are used as a pinned layer of MTJ stack. Up to date, an inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etching (ICPRIE) method of MTJ stacks showed better results in terms of etch rate and etch profile than any other methods such as ion milling, chemical assisted ion etching (CAIE), reactive ion etching (RIE). In order to improve etch profiles without redepositon, a better etching process of MTJ stack needs to be developed by using different etch gases and etch parameters. In this research, influences of $O_2$ gas on the etching characteristics of FePt thin films were investigated. FePt thin films were etched using ICPRIE in $CH_4/O_2/Ar$ gas mix. The etch rate and the etch selectivity were investigated in various $O_2$ concentrations. The etch profiles were studied in varying etch parameters such as coil rf power, dc-bias voltage, and gas pressure. TiN was employed as a hard mask. For observation etch profiles, field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) was used.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.28-33
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• 2020

Plasma etching process employs high density plasma to create surface chemistry and physical reactions, by which to remove material. Plasma chamber includes silicon-based materials such as a focus ring and gas distribution plate. Focus ring needs to be replaced after a short period. For this reason, there is a need to find materials resistant to erosion by plasma. The developed chemical vapor deposition processing to produce silicon carbide parts with high purity has also supported its widespread use in the plasma etch process. Silicon carbide maintains mechanical strength at high temperature, it have been use to chamber parts for plasma. Recently, besides the structural aspects of silicon carbide, its electrical conductivity and possibly its enhanced life time under high density plasma with less generation of contamination particles are drawing attention for use in applications such as upper electrode or focus rings, which have been made of silicon for a long time. However, especially for high purity silicon carbide focus ring, which has usually been made by the chemical vapor deposition method, there has been no study about quality improvement. The goal of this study is to reduce surface roughness and depth of damage by diamond tool grit size and tool dressing of diamond tools for precise dimensional assurance of focus rings.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2003.07a
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• pp.31-36
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• 2003

We investigated dry etching of GaAs and AlGaAs in a high density planar inductively coupled plasma system with $BCl_3$ and $BCl_3/Ar$ gas chemistry. A detailed process study as a function of ICP source power, RIE chuck power and $BCl_3/Ar$ mixing ratio was performed. At this time, chamber pressure was fixed at 7.5 mTorr. The ICP source power and RIE chuck power were varied from 0 to 500 W and from 0 to 150 W, respectively. GaAs etch rate increased with the increase of ICP source power and RE chuck power. It was also found that etch rate of GaAs in $BCl_3$ gas with 25% Ar addition was superior to that of GaAs in a pure $BCl_3$ (20 sccm $BCl_3$) plasma. The result was same with AlGaAs. We expect that high ion-assisted effect in $BCl_3$/Ar plasma increased etch rates of both materials. The GaAs and AIGaAs features etched at 20 sccm $BCl_3$ and $15BCl_3/5Ar$ with 300 W ICP source power, 100 W RIE chuck power and 7.5 mTorr showed very smooth surfaces(RMS roughness < 2 nm) and excellent sidewall. XPS study on the surfaces of processed GaAs also proved extremely clean surfaces of the materials after dry etching.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2006.07c
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• pp.1438-1439
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• 2006

$Ge_{2}Sb_{2}Te_5$(GST) thin film at present is a promising candidate for a phase change random access memory (PCRAM) based on the difference in resistivity between the crystalline and amorphous phase. PCRAM is an easy to manufacture, low cost storage technology with a high storage density. Therefore today several major chip in manufacturers are investigating this data storage technique. Recently, A. Pirovano et al. showed that PCRAM can be safely scaled down to the 65 nm technology node. G. T Jeonget al. suggested that physical limit of PRAM scaling will be around 10 nm node. Etching process of GST thin ra films below 100 nm range becomes more challenging. However, not much information is available in this area. In this work, we report on a parametric study of ICP etching of GST thin films in $Cl_2$/Ar chemistry. The etching characteristics of $Ge_{2}Sb_{2}Te_5$ thin films were investigated using an inductively coupled plasma (ICP) of $Cl_2$/Ar gas mixture. The etch rate of the GST films increased with increasing $Cl_2$ flow rate, source and bias powers, and pressure. The selectivity of GST over the $SiO_2$ films was higher than 10:1. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy(XPS) was performed to examine the chemical species present in the etched surface of GST thin films. XPS results showed that the etch rate-determining element among the Ge, Sb, and Te was Te in the $Cl_2$/Ar plasma.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.74-77
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• 2017

In this work, we investigated the etching characteristics of TaNO thin films and the selectivity of TaNO to $SiO_2$ in an $O_2$/CF4/Ar inductively coupled plasma (ICP) system. The maximum etch rate of TaNO thin film was 297.1 nm/min at a gas mixing ratio of O2/CF4/Ar (6:16:4 sccm). At the same time, the etch rate was measured as a function of the etching parameters, such as the RF power, DC-bias voltage, and process pressure. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis showed the efficient destruction of the oxide bonds by the ion bombardment, as well as the accumulation of low volatile reaction products on the etched surface. Based on these data, the ion-assisted chemical reaction was proposed as the main etch mechanism for the $CF_4$-containing plasmas.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2002.10a
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• pp.46.5-46
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• 2002

As device dimension shrinks down to sub 100nm, it is increasingly important to monitor plasma states. Plasma etching is a key means to fine patterning of thin films. Many parameters are involved in etching and each parameter has different impact on process performances, including etch rate and profile. The uniformity of etch responses should be maintained high to improve device yield and throughput. The uniformity can be measured on any etch response. The most difficulty arises when attempting to characterize etched profile. Conventionally, the profile has been estimated by measuring the slope or angle of etched pattern. One critical drawback in this measurement is that this is unable to cap...

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics D
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• v.36D no.10
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• pp.37-44
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• 1999

This paper report the implementation results of Monte Carlo numerical calculation for ion distributions in plasma dry etching chamber and of the surface evolution simulator using cell removal method for topographical evolution of the surface exposed to etching ion. The energy and angular distributions of ion across the plasma sheath were calculated by MC(Monte Carlo) algorithm. High performance MPP(Massively Parallel Processing) algorithm developed in this paper enables efficient parallel and distributed simulation with an efficiency of more than 95% and speedup of 16 with 16 processors. Parallelization of surface evolution simulator based on cell removal method reduces simulation time dramatically to 15 minutes and increases capability of simulation required enormous memory size of 600Mb.