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

Paper PS-ThM9
Self-Consistent Simulations of the Radial Line Slot Antenna Plasma Source

Thursday, October 31, 2013, 10:40 am, Room 104 C

Session: Plasma Modeling
Presenter: P. Ventzek, Tokyo Electron America
Authors: P. Ventzek, Tokyo Electron America
R. Upadhyay, Esgee Technologies Inc.
M. Aita, Tokyo Electron Ltd.
J. Yoshikawa, Tokyo Electron Ltd.
T. Iwao, Tokyo Electron Ltd.
K. Ishibashi, Tokyo Electron Ltd.
L. Raja, University of Texas at Austin
Correspondent: Click to Email
The radial line slot antenna plasma source couples microwave power through a slot antenna structure and window to a plasma characterized by a generation zone adjacent to the window and a diffusion zone that contacts a substrate. The diffusion zone is characterized by a very low electron temperature. This property renders the source useful for soft etch applications and thin film processing for which low ion energy is desirable. Frequently simulations of the source employ a quasi-neutral plasma model. These are unable to represent the impact of an rf bias applied to a substrate. Furthermore the presence of a time-varying biased potential impacts the transport of charged particles from the zone in which they are created through the diffusion zone to the wafer. At some pressures and powers secondary plasmas may be created. In this presentation we report self-consistent simulations of the source employing a drift-diffusion approximation or variants of this approximation. A test particle Monte Carlo simulation will be used to illustrate the evolution of the electron energy distribution function at different locations in the source. We relate the test particle experiments to electron energy distribution functions derived from solutions of the Boltzmann Equation.