AVS 60th International Symposium and Exhibition
    Plasma Science and Technology Thursday Sessions
       Session PS-ThM

Invited Paper PS-ThM5
Multi-dimensional Modeling of Industrial Plasma Processing Systems

Thursday, October 31, 2013, 9:20 am, Room 104 C

Session: Plasma Modeling
Presenter: S. Rauf, Applied Materials Inc.
Authors: S. Rauf, Applied Materials Inc.
J. Kenney, Applied Materials Inc.
A. Agarwal, Applied Materials Inc.
A. Balakrishna, Applied Materials Inc.
M.-F. Wu, Applied Materials Inc.
K. Collins, Applied Materials Inc.
Correspondent: Click to Email
Plasma processing is widely used in the semiconductor industry for thin film etching and deposition, modification of near-surface material, and cleaning. Several factors have made plasma modeling critical for plasma processing system design in recent years including the necessity to generate uniform plasmas over large substrates while fabricating sub-20 nm devices, increased plasma system cost and complexity, and reduced development time-scales. Using examples from recent design and analysis work, this paper describes the current status of multi-dimensional plasma modeling in the semiconductor industry. Areas warranting further research are also discussed. Most industrial design work is done using fluid plasma models due to their maturity, robustness, and computational speed relative to other techniques. Hybrid codes with Monte Carlo simulation of kinetic phenomena (e.g., secondary and beam electrons) are also utilized. Several examples of the use of these fluid plasma models to industrial hardware and process design are discussed, including analysis of the effect of azimuthally asymmetric components on plasma non-uniformity in capacitively coupled plasmas (CCP), the effect of magnetic field on plasma non-uniformity in magnetized CCPs, and the dynamics of synchronously pulsed inductively coupled plasmas. With growing use of very high frequency radio-frequency sources and increasing plasma dimensions, electromagnetic effects have become pronounced in plasmas. A related issue is modeling of the strong influence of the distributed external electromagnetic circuit (e.g., transmission line, antenna feed) on the plasma and its spatial structure. Computational techniques that are used to treat electromagnetic effects in multi-dimensional plasma models along with examples are discussed. Many plasma processes use pressures < 1 Pa. At these low pressures, fluid assumptions break down and kinetic effects become important. An important unsolved problem is how to model these low pressure plasmas accurately in fluid plasma models. Fully kinetic models are more accurate, but their computational cost and lack of robustness remain an issue. Initial efforts at improving fluid plasma models through comparison with particle-in-cell modeling results and experiments are described.