• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.10-16
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• 2001

Recently plasma etching research has been focused on the metal surfaces in the nuclear industry. In this study, surface etching reaction of metallic Co and Mo, principal contaminants in the spent nuclear components, in CF$_4$/O$_2$, gas plasma has been experimentally investigated to look into the applicability and the effectiveness of the technique for the surface decontamination. Experimental variables are $CF_4$/$O_2$ ratio and substrate temperature between 29$0^{\circ}C$ and 38$0^{\circ}C$. Experimental results Show that the optimum gas composition is 80%CF$_4$-20%$O_2$ and the metallic Co and Mo are etched out well enough in the temperatures range. Cobalt starts to be etched above $350^{\circ}C$ and the etching rate increases with increasing substrate temperature. Maximum rate achieved at 38$0^{\circ}C$ under 220 W r.f. plasma power is 0.06 $\mu\textrm{m}$/min. On the other hand, the metallic Mo is etched easily even at low temperature and the reaction rate drastically increases as the substrate temperature goes up. Highest rate obtained under the same conditions is $1.9\mu\textrm{m}$/min. OES (Optical Emission Spectroscopy) analysis reveals that the intensities of F atom and CO molecule reach maximum at the optimum gas composition, which demonstrates that the principal reaction mechanism is fluorination and/or carbonyl reaction. It is confirmed, therefore, that dry processing technique using reactive plasma is quite feasible and applicable for the decontamination of surface-contaminated parts or equipments.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.17 no.12
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• pp.642-647
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• 2007

We investigated dry etching of acrylic (PMMA) in $O_2/N_2$ plasmas using a multi-layers electrode reactive ion etching (RIE) system. The multi-layers electrode RIE system had an electrode (or a chuck) consisted of 4 individual layers in a series. The diameter of the electrodes was 150 mm. The etch process parameters we studied were both applied RIE chuck power on the electrodes and % $O_2$ composition in the $N_2/O_2$ plasma mixtures. In details, the RIE chuck power was changed from 75 to 200 W.% $O_2$ in the plasmas was varied from 0 to 100% at the fixed total gas flow rates of 20 sccm. The etch results of acrylic in the multilayers electrode RIE system were characterized in terms of negatively induced dc bias on the electrode, etch rates and RMS surface roughness. Etch rate of acrylic was increased more than twice from about $0.2{\mu}m/min$ to over $0.4{\mu}m/min$ when RIE chuck power was changed from 75 to 200 W. 1 sigma uniformity of etch rate variation of acrylic on the 4 layers electrode was slightly increased from 2.3 to 3.2% when RIE chuck power was changed from 75 to 200 W at the fixed etch condition of 16 sccm $O_2/4\;sccm\;N_2$ gas flow and 100 mTorr chamber pressure. Surface morphology was also investigated using both a surface profilometry and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The RMS roughness of etched acrylic surface was strongly affected by % $O_2$ composition in the $O_2/N_2$ plasmas. However, RIE chuck power changes hardly affected the roughness results in the range of 75-200 W. During etching experiment, Optical Emission Spectroscopy (OES) data was taken and we found both $N_2$ peak (354.27 nm) and $O_2$ peak (777.54 nm). The preliminarily overall results showed that the multi-layers electrode concept could be successfully utilized for high volume reactive ion etching of acrylic in the future.

• 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.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
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• 1999.11a
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• pp.70-70
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• 1999

• Proceedings of the Korea Crystallographic Association Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.47-47
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• 2007

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2005.02a
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• pp.78-78
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• 2005

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2005.02a
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• pp.101-101
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• 2005

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2009.08a
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• pp.359-359
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• 2009

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
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• 2006.04a
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• pp.134-134
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• 2006

• Proceedings of the Polymer Society of Korea Conference
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• 2006.10a
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• pp.13-14
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• 2006

The use of soft-lithography instead of standard photolithography and dry etching technologies is attractive because inexpensive optical device can be realized. Polymerization using multi-photon absorption of materials is also a good method for optical waveguide fabrication. Laser induced self-writing technology of optical waveguide is also very simple and attractive. Using these processes, we can fabricate and interconnect optical circuits at once. In this presentation, several simple fabrication methods will be introduced. New optical loss evaluation method for polymer optical waveguides will also be presented