Demonstration of broadband radio frequency sensing: Empirical polysilicon etch rate estimation in a Lam 9400 etch tool

Abstract

The sensitivity of a novel broad frequency band (1–2.25 GHz) radio frequency sensing system to plasma etching process conditions is demonstrated. This is accomplished by using the sensing system to estimate polysilicon etch rate in a Lam 9400 etch tool. A designed experiment varying physical and chemical reactive ion etching regimes was performed with five repetitions at each experimental point. A model relating broadband sensor response to etch rate was regressed using four repetitions of the data and validated on the fifth. Two representations of the broadband data were considered separately when regressing the models, with subset selection used in each case to choose the best predictor variables. In one representation, the sensor data was considered as a vector of 402 real numbers corresponding to magnitude and phase of reflection coefficient at each of 201 frequencies, resulting in an R2 of etch rate estimate of 0.997. In the other, the broadband response was parameterized on the basis of a multimodal cavity resonance model. The inferred parameters of natural frequency, quality factor and resistance were then used as the predictor variables for regression, resulting in an R2 of 0.962.