Monte Carlo simulation studies of sidewall roughening during reactive ion etching

Pani, Santosh; Tjiptoharsono, Febiana; Wong, Chee Cheong; Premachandran, C.S.; Ramama, P.V.; Iyer, M.K.

doi:10.1007/s00339-007-3997-6

Cited by 8 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…This has effectively expanded the scope of the simulations, used more traditionally in the form of kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) codes for explaining the origin of the morphologic features [5-7, 9, 27] as well as the site-specific origin of the etch rate anisotropy [27][28][29][30] and its temperature dependence [31,32]. Since both KMC and CA are also used for the simulation of growth processes [33][34][35][36], and threedimensional attempts are being made to use them for the simulation of deep reactive ion etching [37,38] as well as atom layer deposition [39][40][41], an overview of the different KMC and CA methods themselves is timely appropriate.…”

Section: Anisotropic Etchingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Atomistic methods for the simulation of evolving surfaces

Gosálvez

Xing

Sato

et al. 2008

J. Micromech. Microeng.

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The currently available atomistic simulation tools for an evolving complex interface are described, focusing on the kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) and cellular automata (CA) methods. The different versions of the two methods are considered, stressing their relative weaknesses and strengths. Data storage considerations lead to the choice of an octree data structure, of use in both KMC and CA simulations. The octree results in a substantial reduction in memory use, simultaneously benefiting from rapid addressability and fast searching properties. Examples in anisotropic etching are used to depict the use of the methods in practice and to describe the algorithms.

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Section: Anisotropic Etchingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Atomistic methods for the simulation of evolving surfaces

Gosálvez

Xing

Sato

et al. 2008

J. Micromech. Microeng.

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“…It has been argued that the etch induced reduction of sidewall roughness has been related to the more rapid etching of surface protruding features by ion bombardment with respect to the recessed ones, without however a modeling justification of this idea 20 . Up to date, the simulation works have considered either the impact of etching process on the sidewall roughness of pattern features only 21.22 or the formation of roughness on the sidewall of an underlayer without taking into account the roughness of the resist sidewall 23 . Moreover, during the last years, an etching step is applied before pattern transfer for post-lithography resist trimming and reduction of the CD 24,25 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Line edge roughness transfer during plasma etching: modeling approaches and comparison with experimental results

Constantoudis

Kokkoris

Xydi

et al. 2009

Advances in Resist Materials and Processing Technology XXVI

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In this paper, both modeling and experimental results for the effects of plasma etching on photoresist Line Edge and Width Roughness (LER/LWR) and their transfer to underlayer films are presented and compared. In particular, we investigate the roughness formation on both photoresist and underlayer sidewalls during a) isotropic trimming of photoresist, b) anisotropic plasma etching and LER transfer to substrate, and c) photoresist trimming followed by anisotropic plasma etching of the substrate. The trimming process is modeled with an (2D or 3D) isotropic movement of the resist sidewall. In the anisotropic plasma etching process, the resist sidewall is used as a mask to anisotropically transfer the pattern to the underlying film. Experiments include trimming of 193nm photoresist in O 2 plasma with no bias voltage and anisotropic etching of BARC and Si underlayers in CF 4 and HBr/Cl 2 /O 2 with bias. Both model and experimental results show that resist trimming causes reduction of resist LWR and increase of the correlation length and roughness exponent with trimming time. This means that surface features vs trimming time become lower, wider and with less high frequency fluctuations. In the case of anisotropic etching, model predicts noticeable reduction of LWR whereas, correlation length and roughness exponent remain almost unaffected. The first experimental results seem to confirm these predictions. As regards the resist trimming followed by anisotropic etching, modeling results predict that the intervention of an isotropic trimming process before pattern transfer does not lead to larger LWR reduction.

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