Paper PS-WeA4
INVITED TALK: A Leader In Etching (ALE): How John Coburn Paved the way for Atomic Layer Etching

Wednesday, October 23, 2019, 3:20 pm, Room B130

This talk pays tributes to John Coburn’s seminal contributions in the field of anisotropic etching by plasmas. John Coburn’s early publication on “a system for determining the mass and energy of particles incident on a substrate in a planar diode sputtering system ” set the tone for his many decades of research effort – deciphering the complex reaction mechanisms during plasma-surface interactions. Inspired by John Coburn’s dedicated and outstanding contributions to the field of plasma processing, this talk highlights how the most recent development in anisotropic atomic layer etching can trace its root to John Coburn’s work on delineating the reaction synergism between energetic ions and reactive neutrals. In John Coburn’s words, “Today each wafer is exposed to a plasma etching environment between 10 and 20 times during its manufacture and without the highly anisotropic etching provided by this critical process, high density integrated circuit manufacturing would not be possible.” This talk does not attempt to review all of John Coburn’s work but focuses on the insight he provided to the research communitythat enabled the continued advances in the field where desirable etch specificity, selectivity, and anisotropy can be simultaneously achieved at the atomic scale.