BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS
FIG. 1 is an explanatory view showing the structure of a multi-chamber plasma etching apparatus for realizing the present invention;
FIG. 2 is a cross-sectional view illustrating the structure of a processing chamber of the multi-chamber plasma etching apparatus for realizing the present invention;
FIG. 3 is a view illustrating the sparse-dense profile difference according to the present invention;
FIGS. 4A, 4B, 4C and 4D are views illustrating the process flow according to the present invention; and
FIGS. 5A, 5B and 5C are views illustrating the process parameter dependency according to the present embodiments.
DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS
Now, the structure of a plasma etching apparatus to which the plasma etching method according to the present invention is applied will be described with reference to FIG. 1. FIG. 1 is a plan view of a plasma etching apparatus including a single-wafer multichamber used for the present invention. The plasma etching apparatus is composed of a vacuum transfer chamber 20 equipped with a vacuum transfer robot 21, two or more processing chambers 1a and 1b connected to the vacuum transfer chamber 20 via gates 24a and 24b, load lock chambers 22a and 22b disposed between the vacuum transfer chamber 20 and an atmospheric loader unit 25, an atmospheric loader unit 25, and a cassette mounting unit 23 for mounting the wafer cassettes 26. The plasma etching apparatus is capable of subjecting processing substrates 13 either to identical processes in parallel in the vacuum processing chambers 1a and 1b or to different processes sequentially in vacuum processing chambers 1a and 1b.
Since the vacuum processing chambers 1a and 1b of the plasma etching apparatus are designed substantially identically, the details of the vacuum processing chamber 1 is described in detail with reference to FIG. 2. The illustrated plasma etching apparatus is an UHF plasma etching apparatus in which ultra high frequency (UHF) and magnetic field are applied to generate plasma.
The vacuum processing chamber 1 is a vacuum vessel having coils 9 surrounding the vessel to generate a magnetic field for electron cyclotron resonance (ECR), and the temperature of the inner wall of the chamber is controlled to 30° C. via a temperature regulator (not shown). The processing substrate 13 is mounted on a substrate electrode 18 provided with an electrostatic chuck 7. A DC power supply (not shown) is connected to the electrostatic chuck 7 to attract the processing substrate 13 to the electrostatic chuck 7. A focus ring 17 is disposed on the upper circumference of the electrostatic chuck 7. A substrate bias power supply 11 is connected via a matching box 10 to the substrate electrode 18, enabling high-frequency bias to be applied to the processing substrate 13.
Chlorofluorocarbon such as CF4, CHF3 and CH2F2 which are used conventionally as main etching gases; added gases having high C/F ratio such as C2F6, C3F8, C4F6, C4F8 and C5F8; and inert gases such as Ar, Xe and Kr are fed respectively from gas cylinders 19-1, 19-2 and 19-3, the flow rate of which are controlled via mass flow controllers 12, and introduced via a gas supply pipe 14 connected to process gas sources and through a gas supply plate 8 formed of silicon or glassy carbon having a large number of gas holes formed thereon to the processing chamber 1a.
An antenna electrode 2 is disposed above the gas supply plate 8. High-frequency power is fed from a high-frequency power supply 3 and a high-frequency power supply 5 via matching circuits 4 and 6 and via a coaxial terminal 16 to the antenna electrode 2. High frequency power is irradiated through a dielectric window 15 disposed around the antenna electrode 2 into the processing chamber 1, and simultaneously, a resonance electric field is introduced via the gas supply plate 8 to the processing chamber 1, by which plasma is generated to subject the processing substrate 13 to etching process.
On the lower area of the vacuum processing chamber 1 are disposed an evacuation means (not shown) composed of a turbo-molecular pump (TMP) and a pressure control means (not shown) composed of an automatic pressure controller (APC), by which the chamber is maintained at predetermined pressure while evacuating the etching gas from the vacuum processing chamber 1 after processing. A quartz window 50 is provided on the circumferential wall of the vacuum processing chamber 1, through which the emitting condition with in the vacuum processing chamber is sent via an optical fiber 52 to a spectrometer 53, and the emitting condition within the vacuum processing chamber is computed via a data processing unit 54.
Embodiment 1
Now, a first embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to FIGS. 4A through 4D. FIG. 4A shows the initial profile. FIG. 4B shows an example in which a silicon nitride film 405 of a dense pattern portion is subjected to plasma etching having high verticalness using a main gas chemistry of a prior art plasma etching method, which are CF4, CHF3, CH2F2, CH3F and the like. FIG. 4C shows an example in which a silicon nitride film 405 of a sparse pattern portion is subjected to plasma etching having high verticalness using a main gas chemistry of a prior art plasma etching method, which are CF4, CHF3, CH2F2 and the like. FIG. 4D illustrates etching profiles obtained by the present method.
As illustrated in FIG. 4B, if the silicon nitride film 405 of a dense pattern portion is subjected to plasma etching having high verticalness using a main gas chemistry of a prior art plasma etching method, which are CF4, CHF3, CH2F2, CH3F and the like, it becomes possible to obtain a vertical profile in the dense pattern portion, but the profile of the silicon nitride film 405 of the sparse pattern portion becomes a forward tapered shape. Further, as illustrated in FIG. 4C, if the silicon nitride film 405 of a sparse pattern portion is subjected to plasma etching having high verticalness using a main gas chemistry of a prior art plasma etching method, which are CF4, CHF3, CH2F2 and the like, side etch occurs to the silicon nitride film 405 of the dense pattern portion. As described, according to the prior art plasma etching method, there is a difference between the amount of sidewall protection film components (radicals) supplied to the side walls of the sparse portion and the dense portion, so that differences in size and profile occur between the sparse portion and the dense portion.
In order to realize plasma etching in which the silicon nitride film 405 are vertical in both the dense pattern portion and the sparse pattern portion and no difference in size and profile occurs between the sparse area and the dense area, as shown in FIG. 4D, the present invention adds Xe gas or Kr gas to the main gas chemistry of the prior art plasma etching method, which are CF4, CHF3, CH2F2, CH3F and the like. The object of adding Xe gas or Kr gas is to lower the electron temperature by adding the Xe gas or the Kr gas. By suppressing plasma dissociation (reducing plasma density) by lowering the electron temperature, it becomes possible to expect the increase of ratio of CF2 radicals/C2 radicals, by which the growth of sidewall protection film components necessary to protect the side walls of the dense pattern portion is promoted so as to prevent the occurrence of a side etch.
As a result, as shown in FIG. 5A, the dense-sparse difference is reduced as the added amount of Xe gas is increased. This is because the electron temperature of plasma reduces by adding Xe gas, by which dissociation is suppressed, the CF2/C2 radical ratio in the plasma is increased, and the CF2 radicals having a small attachment coefficient reach the side walls of the dense pattern having a high aspect ratio, according to which the sidewall protection effect is achieved. As for the gas ratio at this time, it is desirable that the added amount of Xe gas or Kr gas is within the range of 0.2 through 10.0 with respect to 1.0 main etching gas according to the prior art plasma etching method. Furthermore, it is desirable that the pressure within the processing chamber is within the range of 0.1 through 20.0 Pa.
Embodiment 2
As described in embodiment 1, the aforementioned problems occur according to the prior art plasma etching method. In order to realize etching having high verticalness both in sparse and dense pattern portions, a C4F8 gas is added to the main gas chemistry of the prior art etching, which are CF4, CHF3, CH2F2, CH3F and the like. The object of adding C4F8 gas is to provide a source for supplying CF2 radicals acting as side wall protection film components of the dense pattern portion.
As a result, the sparse-dense difference is reduced as the additive amount of C4F8 gas is increased, as shown in FIG. 5B. Since the amount of CF2 radicals are increased by adding C4F8 gas, it is considered that CF2 radicals having small attachment coefficient enter the dense pattern portion having a small angle of attack, according to which a side wall protection effect is achieved. It is preferable that the gas ratio at this time is set so that the additive amount of C4F8 gas is approximately 0.01 to 0.5 with respect to 1.0 main etching gas of the prior art plasma etching method. In addition, it is preferable that the pressure within the plasma processing chamber is 0.1 to 20.0 Pa.
Embodiment 3
As described in embodiment 1, the aforementioned problems occur according to the prior art plasma etching method. In the present embodiment, in order to realize an etching having high verticalness in both sparse and dense pattern portions, a high-frequency power zone lower than the prior art plasma etching method is utilized.
As a result, as shown in FIG. 5C, as the high-frequency power is lowered, the sparse-dense difference is reduced. This is because dissociation is suppressed along with the lowering of the high-frequency power, and the CF2 radical ratio of the plasma is increased, according to which the CF2 radicals having a small attachment coefficient reach the side walls of the dense pattern portion having a high aspect ratio, and the effect of protecting the side walls is achieved.
By combining the addition of Xe gas, the addition of C4F8 gas and the application of low high-frequency power zone according to embodiments 1, 2 and 3, it becomes possible to establish a plasma etching method capable of further promoting the generation of CF2 radicals.
In addition, by utilizing the above-mentioned plasma etching method, it becomes possible to establish a plasma etching method capable of performing processing without causing deformation or deterioration of the ArF resist generally considered to have low resistance to plasma. This is because according to the present invention, the generation of CF2 radicals is promoted compared to the prior art plasma etching method, which enables the processing to be performed while protecting the ArF resist.
Patent Application
20080076259
