Peculiarities of Si and SiO2 Etching Kinetics in HBr + Cl2 + O2 Inductively Coupled Plasma

Peculiarities of the etching kinetics and mechanisms for Si and SiO 2 in the HBr + Cl 2 + O 2 inductively coupled plasma were investigated by analyzing the relationships between etching rates and fluxes of active species. The data on plasma parameters, plasma chemistry, and the steady-state plasma composition were obtained using both Langmuir probe diagnostics and 0-dimensional plasma modeling. It was found that an increase in the Cl 2 mixing ratio and input power causes similar trends in the changes in ion energy flux and halogen atom flux but results in different tendencies for both Si and SiO 2 etching rates. It was shown that the influence of input process parameters (HBr/Cl 2 mixing ratio, input power, and bias power) on the Si and SiO 2 etching kinetics may be adequately described in terms of the oxygen atom flux-sensitive reaction probability. The latter directly correlates with the oxygen atom flux/ion energy flux ratio.