Effect of Embedded RF Pulsing for Selective Etching of SiO2 in the Dual-Frequency Capacitive Coupled Plasmas

The characteristics of embedded pulse plasma using 60 MHz radio frequency as the source power and 2 MHz radio frequency as the bias power were investigated for the etching of SiO2 masked with an amorphous carbon layer (ACL) using an Ar/C4F8/O-2 gas mixture. Especially, the effects of the different pulse duty ratio of the embedded dual-frequency pulsing between source power and bias power on the characteristics on the plasma and SiO2 etching were investigated. The experiment was conducted by varying the source duty percentage from 90 to 30% while bias duty percentage was fixed at 50%. Among the different duty ratios, the source duty percentage of 60% with the bias duty percentage of 50% exhibited the best results in terms of etch profile and etch selectivity. The change of the etch characteristics by varying the duty ratios between the source power and bias power was believed to be related to the different characteristics of gas dissociation, fluorocarbon passivation, and ion bombardment observed during the different source/bias pulse on/off combinations. In addition, the instantaneous high electron temperature peak observed during each initiation of the source pulse-on period appeared to affect the etch characteristics by significant gas dissociation. The optimum point for the SiO2 etching with the source/bias pulsed dual-frequency capacitively coupled plasma system was obtained by avoiding this instant high electron temperature peak while both the source power and bias power were pulsed almost together, therefore, by an embedded RF pulsing.