Al2O3 ATOMIC LAYER ETCHING OF Al2O3 USING A COMBINATION OF PLASMA AND VAPOR TREATMENTS

摘要

A method for performing atomic layer etching (ALE) on a substrate comprises: a step of performing a surface modification operation on a substrate surface to convert at least one monolayer of the substrate surface into a modified layer; a step of performing a removal operation on the substrate surface to remove the modified layer from the substrate surface through ligand-exchange reaction configured to volatilize the modified layer; a step of performing plasma treatment on the substrate surface after the removal operation, which is to remove residues generated by the removal operation from the substrate surface such that the residues are volatilized by the plasma treatment; and a step of repeating the operations until the substrate surface is etched by a predetermined thickness.