Plasma-surface Interactions in Material Processing

Abstract

In plasma processes such as reactive ion etching and thin film deposition for microelectronics device fabrication, atomic-level control of surface morphologies and compositions of processed materials has become increasingly important as the device sizes diminish to the nano-meter range. While various species such as ions, neutral radicals, electrons and photons simultaneously hit the material surface in a plasma, the plasma-surface interactions can be best understood if individual elementary processes such as interaction of specific species with the surface at specific incident energy are studied separately under well controlled conditions. In this article, a molecular dynamics (MD) simulation technique is reviewed as a means to analyse plasma-surface interactions in such a manner and some sample simulation results for polymer etching and diamond-like carbon (DLC) deposition are presented.