Optical Thermometry of Semiconductor Processing Plasmas

Published

October 16, 2008

Author(s)

Eric C. Benck

Abstract

Temperatures within semiconductor processing plasmas are important since they control the various reaction rates of the plasma and consequentially can significantly influence the rate and quality of etching or deposition. The nonequilibrium nature of these plasmas makes thermometry particularly challenging since every epecies has a separate (electron, ion, feed gas, radicals, metastable atoms, etc.) temperature or even multiple effective temperatures (translational, vibrational, or rotational). Therefore, a wide variety of different diagnostics are necessary to fully determine the plasma thermal properties.Optical diagnostics are of particular interest since they typically do not perturb the plasma and are often easy to implement. Currently, most commercial cells do not have diagnostics for monitoring temperatures within the plasma. Typically, optical diagnostics found on most commercial systems is used only for end point detection (i.e., identifying when a layer of material has been etched through). Although many other optical diagnostics could be easily implemented, interpretation of the results and knowing how to alter the plasma in response to the diagnostic output is often not well understood.

Citation

Optical Thermometry of Semiconductor Processing Plasmas

Pub Type

Others

Keywords

optical thermometry, plasma, plasma thermal properties, semiconductor processing plasmas, semiconductors

Citation

Benck, E. (2008), Optical Thermometry of Semiconductor Processing Plasmas, Optical Thermometry of Semiconductor Processing Plasmas (Accessed April 23, 2024)