AVS 47th International Symposium
    Plasma Science and Technology Tuesday Sessions
       Session PS-TuM

Paper PS-TuM1
Optimization of Plasma Processing for Manufacturing Using Fast Integrated Models

Tuesday, October 3, 2000, 8:20 am, Room 311

Session: Modeling of Plasma Processes
Presenter: S.S. Shankar, Intel Corporation
Authors: B.Y. Yu, Intel Corporation
T.P. Phung, Intel Corporation
S.S. Shankar, Intel Corporation
Correspondent: Click to Email
Plasma processes are widely used in semiconductor manufacturing and a better understanding of the underpinning plasma and chemical principles is essential for better equipment design and process control. The major problems encountered in the plasma reactor are the non-uniformity at the wafer-level, etch profile controllability, and contamination. A fast and physically based integrated simulation tool has been developed to provide validated simulations of plasma processes, chemical reactions, transport, and surface evolution. The tool is employed to aid in understanding the plasma etching as a function of equipment variables. The tool consists of (1) a three-dimensional multi-species transient plasma processing simulator with capabilities for predicting wafer-level etch rate and uniformity, (2) a feature-level model for surface topographic evolution, and (3) a multi-scale linker to self consistently connect physical quantities between the two length scales@footnote 1,2@ In addition, different advanced numerical techniques have been developed for simulating realistic systems with multiple gas and surface chemistry. The plasma simulator is demonstrated on unstructured three dimensional grids with transport of mass, momentum, and energy. We have employed the integrated simulator to study multiple process windows in two different processes such as plasma physical sputtering of oxide (inter-layer dielectric) and CF4-based oxide etching. Simulation results are compared with experiments. @FootnoteText@ @footnote 1@ S.T. Rodgers, K.F. Jensen, J of App. Phys, (1997) @footnote 2@ S.T. Rodgers, S. Shankar, U. Hansen, and K.F. Jensen, J of Appl. Phys (submitted, 1999)