AVS 51st International Symposium
    Plasma Science and Technology Thursday Sessions
       Session PS-ThA

Paper PS-ThA10
Molecular Dynamics Simulation for Physical Sputtering and Deposition of Pt and Au Films

Thursday, November 18, 2004, 5:00 pm, Room 213A

Session: Plasma-Surface Interaction
Presenter: S.H. Hamaguchi, Osaka University, Japan
Authors: K. Ito, Kyoto University, Japan
H. Yamada, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan
S.H. Hamaguchi, Osaka University, Japan
Correspondent: Click to Email
Platinum (Pt) is often used as a material of choice for electrodes of submicron-scale capacitors in Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) and other semiconductor devices. Gold (Au) is also used in various electronics applications due to its high conductivity and chemical stability. Since micron/sub-micron-scale etching of noble metals such as Pt and Au in semiconductor applications is usually done mostly by physical sputtering, a better understanding of the nature of beam surface interaction between non-reactive atoms and Pt/Au films may facilitate the development of better noble metal dry etching processes with higher controllability of micro-scale feature profiles. For this purpose, we have used molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to study Ar or Pt beam interaction with Pt substrates and also Ar or Au beam interaction with Au substrates, using classical inter-atomic potential functions based on the Embedded Atom Method (EAM). Especially of interest are estimates of sputtering yields/deposition rates of such processes as functions of beam energies and beam injection angles obtained from MD simulations. Some of the simulation results are in good agreement with known experimental results whereas others are qualitatively different from experimental observations although there have not been many beam experiments in the relatively low energy range that we are interested in. In this presentation, we shall present MD simulations data of the sputtering yields and deposition rates, compare those with known experimental data, and discuss possible sources of discrepancy between simulation and experimental data.