The utilization of e-beam dependent plasma as a source for plasma-polymer interactions has been examined employing two high level photoresists that differed dramatically in polymer structure. The impact of Ar+ bombardment energy, chemically-assisted etching using fluorine, and also the outcomes of the current presence of a thin fluorocarbon (FC) layer on surface roughness evolution and etching rates of the blanket photoresists were identified. Low energy ion bombardment increased surface roughness. Smaller amounts of fluorine (5% SF6/Ar), led to an additional increase of the top roughness and etch rate over values of Ar+ ion bombardment alone. Surprise result was that the photoresist surface roughness advanced throughout the afterglow of an Ar plasma and reduced for long afterglows (300 ms). It had been proven that the roughness of an FC overlayer impact the photoresist underlayer etching and surface roughening….
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Plasma Processing of Advanced Materials (Polymers/Photoresists)
1.2 Introduction to Various Plasma Sources
1.2.1 ICP
1.2.2 CCP
1.2.3 LAPPS (E-Beam)
1.2.4 Increasing Ion Energy to Surfaces
1.3 Current Work
1.4 Outline of Thesis
Chapter 2: Study of Photoresist Etching and Roughness Formation in Electron-Beam Generated Plasmas
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Experimental setup and procedure
2.2.1 Photoresists
2.2.2 LAPPS
2.2.3 Ex Situ Analysis
2.2.4 Thin FC Layer
2.3 Results
2.3.1 Effect of Fluorine Addition
2.3.2 Thin FC layer
2.4 Discussion
2.5 Conclusions
Chapter 3: Temporal Behavior and Fluence Changes in LAPPS during Photoresist etching
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Experimental Setup
3.2.1 Photoresists
3.2.2 Argon Experiments (SS chamber)
3.3 Results
3.4 Discussion
3.4.1 Effect of Pulsed LAPPS
3.4.2 Ar
Ion Bombardment..
Source: University of Maryland