Numerical Modeling of Heat-Mass Transfer in Radial Flow Plasma-Chemical Reactor with Multicomponent Kinetics CF4/02

The binary gas mixture CF4/O2 is widely used in industrial production of semiconductor devices to increase the etching rate of silicon wafers. The number of papers devoted to mathematical modeling of silicon etching in CF4/O2 plasma is relatively small. Moreover, the numerical modeling of silicon etching with simplifying kinetics of the gas phase and heterogeneous chemical reactions predicts a maximum of the etching rate near the 50% fraction of O2 in the parent gas mixture 1. This is inconsistent with experimental data where the maximum etching rate detected was at the 15-30% range of O2. In this paper, the results of numerical optimization of a radial flow plasma-chemical reactor depending on the binary gas composition CF4/O2 are presented. Quantitative estimations of oxygen chemisorption and adsorption of CF2 CF3 contributions to the etching rate are obtained. See also ADM001433, Conference held International Conference on Methods of Aerophysical Research (11th) Held in Novosibirsk, Russia on 1-7 Jul 2002