NOVEL HIGH-DENSITY PLASMA TOOL FOR LARGE-AREA FLAT-PANEL DISPLAY ETCHING

A novel dry etch tool - large area source supported ion etching (LASSI E) - has been developed appropriate for the processing of substrate si zes of presently up to 600X400 mm(2). The plasma is produced through a n array of four inductively coupled plasma sources driven by one commo n 13.56 MHz generator. A second rf generator serves for substrate bias ing. Plasma diagnostic data suggest that LASSIE has strong capabilitie s for future large area etch applications avoiding several drawbacks o f conventional reactive ion etching (RIE) in parallel-plate reactors. In particular considerably higher etch rates are to be expected since the plasma densities are roughly one order of magnitude higher than in conventional RIE. In addition the processing will be more flexible an d better controlled due to the decoupling of plasma densities and ion bombardment energies. A scale-up with respect to the processing of waf er sizes larger than presently envisaged is easily achieved by the LAS SIE concept. (C) 1996 American Vacuum Society.