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Unit - II
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When a material is attacked by a liquid or vapor etchant, it is removed isotropically (etch rate is uniform in all
directions) or anisotropically (etch rate is orientation dependent). The difference between isotropic etching and
anisotropic etching is shown in Figure 1. Material removal rate for wet-etching is usually faster than the rates for
many dry etching processes and can easily be changed by varying temperature or the concentration of active
species.
(a) Completely anisotropic (b) Partially anisotropic and (c) Isotropic etching of silicon
Wet etching
Wet chemical etching is used extensively in semiconductor processing. Starting from the sawing of semiconductor
wafers, lapping and polishing to give an optically flat, damage-free surface.
The mechanisms for wet chemical etching involve three essential steps: i) the reactants are transported by
diffusion to the reacting surface, ii) chemical reactions occur at the surface, and iii) the products from the surface
are removed by diffusion. These reactions are either oxidation or reduction type.
The agitation and the temperature of the etchant solution can
influence the etch rate. Generally wet etching is Isotropic.
Etch rates must be uniform across a wafer, from wafer to wafer, and
from run to run. Etch rate uniformity is given by:
×
Silicon Etching
For semiconductor materials, wet chemical etching usually starts with oxidation followed by dissolution of the
oxide by a chemical reaction. For silicon, the most commonly used etchants are mixtures of nitric acid (HNO3) and
hydrofluoric acid (HF) in water or acetic acid (CH3COOH). Nitric acid oxidizes silicon to form a SiO2 layer.
The oxidation reaction is
Hydrofluoric acid is used to dissolve the SiO2 layer. The reaction is:
Some etchants dissolve a given crystal plane of single-crystal silicon much faster than another plane; this results
in orientation-dependent etching. For a silicon lattice, the (111)-plane has more available bonds per unit area
than the (110)- and (100)-planes; therefore, the etch rate is expected to be slower for the (111)-plane.
A commonly used orientation-dependent etch for silicon consists of a mixture of KOH in water and isopropyl
alcohol. For example, a solution with 19 wt% KOH in deionized (DI) water at about 80°C removes the (100)-plane
at a much greater rate than the (110)- and (111)-planes. The ratio of the etch rates for the (100)-, (110)-, and
(111)-planes is 100:16:1.
Orientation-dependent etching of <100>-oriented silicon
through a patterned silicon dioxide mask creates precise
V-shaped grooves, as shown in Fig. 2a, the edges being
(111)-planes at an angle of 54.7°. If the window in the
mask is sufficiently large or if the etching time is short, a
U-shaped groove will be formed. The width of the bottom
surface is given by
Dry etching is one of the most widely used processes in semiconductor manufacturing since it is easier to control,
is capable of defining feature sizes smaller than 100 nm, and produces highly anisotropic etching. It may remove
the materials by chemical reactions (using chemical reactive gases or plasma), by purely physical methods (e.g.,
sputtering and ion beam-induced etching), or with a combination of both chemical reaction and physical
bombardment (e.g., reactive ion etching).
Example of etching silicon with Xenon Difluoride (XeF2). The reaction and its sequence is:
Chamber pressures of few Torr is sufficient. It is possible to use it in pulsed or constant pressures. Typical etch
rates of 1 to 3 μm/min can be achieved. This reaction is exothermic and generate lot of heat, hence the stage or
wafer temperature is lowered to protect the resist based mask.
Other, interhalogens based gases used are BrF3 and ClF3. These processes are most famous in MEMS applications.
ii) Plasma based : Uses Radio Frequency (RF) power to drive the etching. Some of its types are
Physical Etching, Chemical Etching, Reactive Ion Etching, Deep Reactive Ion Etching
The mechanism of dry etching is very similar to the wet etching mechanism. First, a feed gas is introduced into
the chamber, where it is broken down into chemically reactive species to form plasma. Reactive species diffuse
to the surface to be etched and are then adsorbed on this surface. Once the reactive species reach the surface,
they move around on the surface via diffusion until they react with the exposed film. It leads to formation of
products of the reaction which desorb from the surface and diffuse away through the gas steam. In some cases,
the sample chuck temperature is intentionally elevated to increase volatility of the products.
There are two types of biasing schemes in production of plasma: (left) grounding of wafer, (right) biasing of wafer.
In a capacitively coupled plasma (CCP) etcher, etchant gases are injected between two parallel metallic electrodes with
symmetrical size and position to which voltage is applied on one electrode. The potential drop across the gas breaks it down
and generates the plasma. A significant fraction of the input power is consumed by ions accelerating in the sheaths, and is
dissipated at the electrode surfaces during ion bombardment. Therefore, a small fraction of the input power is used for
plasma generation. The gas dissociation fraction is low and electron density is also low (~ 109 to 1010 cm-3). Typically
operation pressures is ~ 50 to 500 mTorr. Due to high pressure, the scattering of gas species is large which prevents their use
for fabrication of extremely small features
Inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etchers were developed to obtain high-aspect-ratio features with high selectivity. ICP
etchers are operated at lower gas pressure (~3 to 50 mtorr) than CCP etchers. The lower pressure reduces gas collisions and
assist in enhanced anisostropic etching. The increased mean free path of etchants can move them easily into and out of high-
aspect ratio features. As most of the input power is consumed by electrons, the electron density is substantially larger (~
1011- 1012 cm-3) in ICP etchers than in CCP. Therefore, the ICP etcher is a high-density plasma (HDP) etcher.
Physical Etching (Sputter Etching):
• The process is based on physical bombardment with ions or atoms, hence it is non-selective.
• Chemically inert projectile is accelerated by applying high voltages to electrodes, which also creates plasma.
The plasma is generated by capacitive coupling between the eletrodes.
• Knocking off of surface atoms occurs by momentum transfer from projectile during the collision.
• Substrate atoms are dislodged if projectile energy exceeds bonding energy.
• Very similar to ion implantation, but low-energy ions are used to avoid implantation damage.
• Highly anisotropic
• Etch rates for most materials are comparable
PE is the basic working principle of Ion milling and focused ion beam etching
which uses lower pressures, often as low as 10−4 Torr. It bombards the wafer
with energetic ions of gases (Ar and Ga). It is widely used in patterning
intricate features.
A simple example of chemical plasma etching is Si etching using F, which has a high etch rate even at room
temperature:
Chemical etching is often isotropic as incoming neutral etchants have a uniform angular distribution. However,
for crystalline materials, chemical etching can be sensitive to crystallographic orientation. Processing conditions
are therefore chosen so as to maintain both isotropic and anisotropic etching. Etch rates of 2 μm/min can be
achieved in RIE.
Factors such as applied coil or electrode power, reactant gas flow rates, duty cycles, chamber pressures,
substrate temperature and mixture concentrations are the variable parameters in optimization of process.
Material Chemistry
SiO2 CF4, SF6, NF3
Si3N4 CF4, SF6, NF3, CHF3
Aluminium Cl2, CCl4, SiCl4, BCl3
Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DRIE):
DRIE is achieved with inductively coupled plasma. Further it is possible to produce plasma at two different RF
frequencies such as 13.56 MHz and 2.45 GHz. [write ICP note from previous slide for 12 marks]
It relies on the source gases being broken down in a high-density plasma region before reaching the wafer, which has a small
but controlled voltage drop from the plasma. This technique cannot be performed in reactive ion etch systems (RIE), as these
have the wrong balance of ions to free radical species. This balance can be achieved in high-density plasma systems (HDP).
Sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) is the source gas used to provide the fluorine
for silicon etching.
Applications -
• MEMS
• Microfluidics
• Medical
Question bank
For 5 marks
For 12 marks
Give detailed account of dry etching for non-plasma and capacitively coupled plasma processes.
Explain in detail dry etching using inductive coupled plasma with deep reactive ion etching process.