Electric field reversals resulting from voltage waveform tailoring in Ar/O2 capacitively coupled plasmas sustained in asymmetric systems

Abstract

The etching of nanometer scale high-aspect-ratio (HAR) features into dielectric materials in low pressure radio frequency excited plasmas is often accompanied by charge accumulation inside the features which can slow etching rates and produce distortions such as twisting. The intra-feature charging is at least partially produced by differences in electron and ion energy and angular distributions (EADs). Positive ions, accelerated to high energies having narrow angular spreads by the sheath electric field, can penetrate deeply into HAR features. Electrons typically arrive at the wafer with nearly thermal and isotropic distributions and do not penetrate deeply into HAR features. These disparities lead to differential charging of the inside of the feature, which can lead to reductions in etch rate and feature distortion due to ion deflection. With increasing aspect ratio of features, charging challenges are expected to continue for the foreseeable future. In this work, the use of tailored voltage waveforms in geometrically asymmetric capacitively coupled plasmas sustained in Ar/O2 at 40 mTorr was computationally investigated with the goal of shaping the EAD of electrons incident onto the substrate to address differential charging. The tailored waveform consisted of a sinusoidal wave and its higher harmonics with a fundamental frequency of 1 MHz. We found that electric field reversals (EFRs) in the sheath and presheath can occur during the anodic portion of the cycle. The EFR increases the energy and decreases the angular spread of electrons incident onto the substrate. The magnitude of the EFR can be controlled by the phase angle of the even harmonics and the gas composition. Due to its electronegative nature, increasing mole fractions of O2 impedes electron transport to the surface which further increases the EFR.