Study Group report
This is the final report on the problem of modelling plasma etching of semiconductors, brought to ESGI46 by Trikon.

Report authors:
Chris Budd (University of Bath)
Giles Richardson (University of Nottingham)

Introduction
A process used by Trikon to etch a semi-conductor comprises a plasma chamber in which radicals and electrons are produced through ionisation in a plasma. The main questions that Trikon wanted answering in the Study Group were how the process depends on

• the gas flow
• the heating power,
• and the gas pressure, which is directly related to the available number of oxygen molecules for ionisation.

The report essentially comprises two parts. Firstly it looks at some detailed models of the transport of the electrons and the oxygen ions and their associated field E within the plasma. Secondly, it considers a simplified diffusion model of this process to approximate the global distribution of the electrons and oxygen radicals in a simple one-dimensional approximation to the plasma chamber.

Download 'PlasmaEtching.pdf' (156 Kb).