Recouping etch rates in pulsed inductively coupled plasmas

Pulsed rf plasmas are increasingly being employed for plasma etching at future technological nodes. Although the plasma uniformity usually improves with pulsing, the lower time-averaged power decreases the etch rate and the lower throughput is undesirable. It is therefore important to evaluate different strategies to restore higher etch rates while retaining the advantages of pulsed plasmas. In this work, the impact of varying pulsing modes in an inductively coupled plasma on plasma characteristics and feature profile evolution are discussed using the results from a two-dimensional reactor scale plasma model coupled to a Monte Carlo based feature profile model. Results are discussed for poly-Si etching in an Ar/Cl2 gas mixture. The consequences of source-only and bias-only pulsing modes on discharge characteristics, ion energy distributions (IEDs) to the wafer, and feature profile evolution are discussed. Although the etch depth rates were found to be higher for source-only pulsing compared to the synchronized (source and bias) pulsing mode, the higher ion energies in the afterglow period during source-only pulsing may also increase ion bombardment damage. Compensation of power may allow for increased etch depth rates while retaining the benefits of synchronized pulsing. Further, power compensation level can be varied to achieve fine tuning of the IEDs to the wafer.