Visualization of Plasma Etching Damage of Si Using Room Temperature Spectroscopic Photoluminescence

摘要

Room temperature photoluminescence (RTPL) spectroscopy was proposed as an in-line plasma-induced-damage (PID) visualization technique. As an application example, ～200 and ～600 nm thick oxide films on 300 mm wafers (SiCVSi) grown by plasma enhanced chemical deposition (PECVD) were plasma etched under different etching and bias radio frequency (RF) power conditions. Oxide etch rate, oxide uniformity and RTPL spectra/intensity were measured and characterized under three excitation wavelengths (532, 650 and 827 nm) with different probing depths. A distinct pattern of PIDs was observed representative of showerhead patterns, common to a typical plasma etching system. Visualization of PIDs was successfully done by multi-wavelength RTPL spectroscopy.