Tutorial Speaker

Etching process

Yoshinori Iino (Shibaura Mechatronics Corporation)

Biography

Responsible for dry (etching & ashing) process of wafer

Responsible for dry (etching & ashing) process of photomask

Dry etch process

Abstract

　In semiconductor fabrication, etching is one of the major steps along with photolithography and thin-film deposition. Etching is a process where unnecessary part on metal film is removed and pattern are formed and it is classified in to two categories: dry etching and wet etching.
　Dry etching involves using reactive gases and plasma etching. While wet etching involves immersing the material in a corrosion solution to corrode it. Dry etching allows for anisotropic etching, which means that only the vertical direction of the material is etched. In contrast, wet etching is isotropic etching, which can reduce the width of the line. The mechanism of dry etching is that radicals generated by plasma are adsorbed onto the substrate surface, and ion bombardment accelerates the reaction with the surface material, forming highly volatile reaction products that are then exhausted from the chamber.
　In this presentation, a simple explanation of the etching process will be provided.