Plasma Processing System Design Using Plasma and Electromagnetic Modeling

摘要

With microelectronics devices shrinking below 22 nm, the requirements on plasma etching, deposition and surface modification processes are becoming more stringent in the semiconductor industry. Plasma processing system development cost has also grown considerably in recent years due to larger substrates and increased system complexity. Computational modeling has therefore started playing a major role in the design and improvement of plasma processing tools. As commercial plasma modeling software lack essential features to analyze state-of-the-art plasma processing equipment, we have expended considerable effort in recent years to develop 2 and 3-dimensional coupled plasma and electromagnetic modeling tools. This paper focuses on these modeling software and their application to plasma processing system design. Several of these examples deal with process uniformity, which is one of the major challenges facing plasma processing equipment design on large substrates. Three-dimensional plasma modeling is used to understand the sources of plasma non-uniformity, including in the radio-frequency (RF) current path, and develop uniformity improvement techniques.