Improvement of Cr dry etching characteristics with MERIE system

摘要

Dry etching characteristics of Cr films were investigaterd and some improvements have been done with magnetically enhanced reactive ion etching (MERIE) system. Cear field patterns and dark field ones exposed on thin EB resists, whose thickness was less than 300nm, were etched. Although there had been some difficulties in etching of clear-field patterns with SAL-601 (Shipley), these situations were much improved with an appropriate etching condition of magneti field. It was found that magnetic field intensity (MFI) affected Cr etching distributions very much. In marked contrast to the above results, MFI condition showed little contributions to the etching distribution of dark field patterns exposed on ZEP-7000 (Nippon Zeon). It was shown that some waveforms of magnetic field could be effective to improve the etchingcharacteristics for the plate whose etching area was extremely small. Etching characteristics for these extremely varied Cr-loaded are considered through the above etching results. Discussions about more useful dry etching process with MERIE system are also described.