Cold and Low-Energy Ion Etching (COLLIE)

Abstract

It is shown that a new cold and low-energy ion etching system (COLLIE) is effective as a dry etching technique for fabrication of VLSI devices. In the COLLIE system, plasma instabilities are suppressed by an MHD stable magnetic field consisting of a solenoid coil and multicusp magnets. The ion temperature, which is strongly related to plasma instabilities, is lowered below 2 eV in this system. Etched profiles show a strong anisotropic feature without applying any external electrical bias. As small angular distribution of incident ions to a sample is realized, the microloading effect is greatly improved.