High-Density Hollow Cathode Plasma Etching for Field Emission Display Applications

Abstract

This paper investigates the characteristics of a newly developed high density hollow cathode plasma(HCP) system and its application for the etching of silicon wafers. We used SF 6 and O 2 gases in the HCP dry etch process. This paper demonstrates very high plasma density of 2?10 12 cm -3 at a discharge current of 20 mA. Silicon etch rate of 1.3 ? m/min was achieved with SF 6 /O 2 plasma conditions of total gas pressure of 50 mTorr, gas flow rate of 40 sccm, and RF power of 200 W. This paper presents surface etching characteristics on a crystalline silicon wafer and large area cast type multicrystlline silicon wafer. We obtained field emitter tips size of less than 0.1 ? m without any photomask step as well as with a conventional photolithography. Our experimental results can be applied to various display systems such as thin film growth and etching for TFT-LCDs, emitter tip formations for FEDs, and bright plasma discharge for PDP applications. In this research, we studied silicon etching properties by using the hollow cathode plasma system.