PREDICTION OF MULTIPLE-FEATURE EFFECTS IN PLASMA-ETCHING

Charging and topography evolution simulations during plasma etching of dense line-and-space patterns reveal that multiple-feature effects in fluence critically the etch profile characteristics of the various lin es. By including neighboring lines, the simulation predicts a peculiar notching behavior, where the extent of notching varies with the locat ion of the line. Feature-scale modeling can no longer be focused on in dividual features alone; ''adjacency'' effects are crucial for underst anding and predicting the outcome of etching experiments at reduced de vice dimensions. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.