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Surface smoothing during plasma etching of Si in Cl2
Effects of initial roughness on the evolution of plasma-induced surface roughness have been investigated during Si etching in inductively coupled Cl2 plasmas, as a function of rf bias power or ion incident energy in the range Ei ≈ 20–500 eV. Experiments showed that smoothing of initially rough surf...
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Published in: | Applied physics letters 2016-11, Vol.109 (20) |
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Main Authors: | , , , , , |
Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
Subjects: | |
Citations: | Items that this one cites Items that cite this one |
Online Access: | Get full text |
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Summary: | Effects of initial roughness on the evolution of plasma-induced surface roughness have been investigated during Si etching in inductively coupled Cl2 plasmas, as a function of rf bias power or ion incident energy in the range Ei
≈ 20–500 eV. Experiments showed that smoothing of initially rough surfaces as well as non-roughening of initially planar surfaces can be achieved by plasma etching in the smoothing mode (at high Ei
) with some threshold for the initial roughness, above which laterally extended crater-like features were observed to evolve during smoothing. Monte Carlo simulations of the surface feature evolution indicated that the smoothing/non-roughening is attributed primarily to reduced effects of the ion scattering or reflection from microscopically roughened feature surfaces on incidence. |
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ISSN: | 0003-6951 1077-3118 |
DOI: | 10.1063/1.4967474 |