Two-dimensional fluid simulation on transient behavior and plasma uniformity in pulsed RF CCP sustained in SiH4 /N2/O2

Abstract

Improving plasma uniformity during plasma processing in the microelectronics industry is of critical importance to the quality of etching or deposition. Compared to continuous wave (CW) plasmas, pulsed plasmas have drawn much attention with the introduction of additional pulse parameters, which would be helpful to improve the plasma properties. In this paper, a two-dimensional fluid model is developed to investigate a pulsed radio-frequency capacitively coupled plasma (CCP) sustained in SiH4/N2/O2 mixture at fixed operating conditions of 70V rf power, 300 mTorr (40 Pa) gas pressure and an SiH4/N2/O2 gas ratio of 2.5/92.5/5. First, we study the temporal dynamics of densities of the electron, positive ion and negative ion, at different positions in the pulsed CCP. Under the operation conditions, charged particles, instead of neutral particles, may basically respond to the applied modulated power. The electron density in the bulk could approach a quasi-steady value by the end of the activeglow. However, the achievement of a quasi-steady state of plasma like that in the CW condition not only depends on enough activeglow time of the pulse discharge but also relies on the observed position in the discharge. In addition, we investigate the impact of pulse parameters on plasma characteristics, showing that the radial inhomogeneity of plasma caused by the edge effect can be effectively suppressed by controlling the duty cycle (DC) rather than the pulse repetition frequency (PRF). Improvement of the plasma uniformity in pulsed discharge is due to the competition between the edge effects during the activeglow and diffusion of charged species during the afterglow. Moreover, the electron density undergoes a local minimum value in the temporal profile before it rises sharply beyond that of CW discharge, since production of electrons is less than loss by the spatial movement at the very beginning of one pulse. Also, there appears to be a peak value of ion bombardment energy at the beginning of power, which may damage the wafer in actual industrial processes. At a certain DC, this peak may be flattened to a certain degree by adjusting the PRF.