AVS 46th International Symposium
    Manufacturing Science and Technology Group Monday Sessions
       Session MS-MoM

Invited Paper MS-MoM3
SEMATECH's Plasma Modeling Project

Monday, October 25, 1999, 9:00 am, Room 611

Session: Advanced Design Methodologies and Factory Modeling
Presenter: G.L. Bell, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Authors: G.L. Bell, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
P.M. Ryan, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Correspondent: Click to Email
As wafer costs increase with size, the expenses associated with developing new tools and running process development experiments increase prohibitively. Robust plasma models and high-performance simulation tools are needed to reduce the significant cost of introducing new processing technologies. The goal of the SEMATECH Plasma Model Development project is to accelerate technology development through the advancement of predictive models for plasma etching. Three major barriers must be overcome to accomplish this goal: 1) the lack of detailed verified data on actual production tools to be used for testing the models and to support process development, 2) the need for gas phase and surface mechanisms for commercially relevant oxide and metal etch plasmas, and 3) the absence of a comprehensive database of detailed cross-sections of plasma etching gases for use by the modeling community. To address these hurdles, this SEMATECH project combines the efforts of universities and national labs into an integrated modeling effort. Supported research includes development of a relevant gas phase chemistry database through cross-section and reaction rate measurements and computations, development of surface reaction mechanisms from particle beam and in situ surface measurements during plasma processing, and experimental measurement of plasma parameters and ion/neutral species distributions on representative plasma reactors. The team produces "best known" database sets (gas phase, surface reactions, plasma diagnostics data and model inputs) to develop physical models for input into advanced codes which predict etch rate (selectivity) and uniformity. This presentation outlines the project structure, the role of the working groups and some representative data obtained to date. @FootnoteText@ G.L. Bell is currently on assignment to SEMATECH's Interconnect Division.