• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.39 no.8
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• pp.12-16
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• 2002

It is confirmed that the ITO(Indium Tin Oxide) thin films can be etched by low-temperature plasma at atmospheric pressure. The etching happened deepest at a hydrogen flow rate of 4 sccm, and the etch rate was 120 /min. The etching speed corresponded to the H$\alpha$* emission intensity The etching mechanism of the ITO thin films is as follows; thin films were reduced by H$\alpha$*, and the metal compound residues were detached from the substrate by reacting on the CH* The etching was started after etching time of initial 50 sec and above the threshold temperature of 145$^{\circ}C$. The activation energy of 0.16 eV(3.75 Kcal/mole) was obtained from the Arrehenius plots.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.57-62
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• 2022

The plasma resistance of multi-component glasses containing La, Gd, Ti, Zn, Y, Zr, Nb, and Ta was analyzed in this study. The plasma etching was performed via inductively coupled plasma-reactive ion etching (ICP-RIE) using CF₄/O₂/Ar mixed gas. After the reaction, the glass with a low fluoride sublimation temperature and high content of P, Si, and Ti elements showed a high etching rate. On the other hand, the glass containing a high fluoride sublimation temperature component such as Ca, La, Gd, Y, and Zr exhibited high plasma resistance because the etch rate was lower than that of sapphire. Glass with low plasma resistance increased surface roughness after etching or nanoholes were formed on the surface, but glass with high plasma resistance showed little change in surface microstructure. Thus, the results of this study demonstrate the potential for the development of plasma-resistant glasses (PRGs) with other compositions besides alumino-silicate glasses, which are conventionally referred to as plasma-resistant glasses.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.1-5
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• 2009

This investigation is applied Taguchi method and the analysis of variance(ANOVA) to the reactive ion etching(RIE) characteristics of $SiO_2$ film coated on a wafer with Experimental Analysis and Optimization of $CF_4/O_2$ Plasma Etching Process mixture. Plans of experiments via nine experimental runs are based on the orthogonal arrays. A $L_9$ orthogonal array was selected with factors and three levels. The three factors included etching time, RF power, gas mixture ratio. The etching rate of the film were measured as a function of those factors. In this study, the etching thickness mean and uniformity of thickness of the RIE are adopted as the quality targets of the RIE etching process. The partial factorial design of the Taguchi method provides an economical and systematic method for determining the applicable process parameters. The RIE are found to be the most significant factors in both the thickness mean and the uniformity of thickness for a RIE etching process.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.297-306
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• 2004

A plasma is a collection of charged particles and on average is electrically neutral. In fabricating integrated circuits, plasma etching is a key means to transfer a photoresist pattern into an underlayer material. To construct a predictive model of plasma-etching processes, a polynomial neural network (PNN) is applied. This process was characterized by a full factorial experiment, and two attributes modeled are its etch rate and DC bias. According to the number of input variables and type of polynomials to each node, the prediction performance of the PNN was optimized. The various performances of the PNN in diverse environments were compared to three types of statistical regression models and the adaptive network fuzzy inference system (ANFIS). As the demonstrated high-prediction ability in the simulation results shows, the PNN is efficient and much more accurate from the point of view of approximation and prediction abilities.

• Journal of information and communication convergence engineering
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.187-190
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• 2005

High aspect ratio via-hole etching process has emerged as one of the most crucial means to increase component density for ULSI devices. Because of charge accumulation in via-hole, this sophisticated and important process still hold several problems, such as etching stop and loading effects during fabrication of integrated circuits. Indeed, the concern actually depends on accumulated charge. For monitoring accumulated charge during plasma etching process, charge-up monitoring sensor was fabricated and tested under some plasma conditions. This paper presents a neural network-based technique for analyzing and modeling several electrical performance of plasma charge-up monitoring sensor.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.303-306
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• 2005

High aspect ration via-hole etching process has emerged as one of the most crucial means to increase component density for ULSI devices. Because of charge accumulation in via hole, this sophisticated and important process still hold several problems, such as etching stop, loading effects during fabrication of integrated circuits. Indeed, the concern actually depends on accumulated charge. For monitoring accumulated charge during plasma etching process, charge-up monitoring sensor was fabricated and tested under some plasma conditions. This paper presents a neural network-based technique for analyzing and modeling several electrical performance of plasma charge-up monitoring sensor.

• Proceedings of the Korean Nuclear Society Conference
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• 1996.11b
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• pp.506-511
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• 1996

Research on the dry etching of UO$_2$ by using fluorine containing gas plasma is carried out for DUPIC (Direct Use of spent PWR fuel In CANDU) process which is taken into consideration for potential future fuel cycle in Korea. CF$_4$/O$_2$ gas mixture is chosen for the reactant gas and the etching rates of UO$_2$ by the gas plasma are investigated as functions of substrate temperature, plasma gas pressure, CF$_4$/O$_2$ ratio, and plasma power, It is tentatively found that the etching rate can reach 1000 monolayers/min. and the optimum CF$_4$/O$_2$ ratio is around 4:1.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.507-514
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• 2003

Recently dry decontamination/surface-cleaning technology using plasma etching has been focused in the nuclear industry. In this study, the applicability of this new dry processing technique are experimentally investigated by examining the etching reaction of $UO_2$, Co, and Mo in r.f. plasma with the etchant gas of $CF_4/O_2$ mixture. $UO_2$ is chosen as a representing material for uranium and TRU (TRans-Uranic) compounds while metallic Co and Mo are selected because they are the principal contaminants in the used metallic nuclear components such as valves and pipes made of stainless steel or inconel. Results show that in all cases maximum etching rate is achieved when the mole fraction of $UO_2\;in\;CF_4/O_2$ mixture gas is $20\%$, regardless of temperature and r.f. power. In case of $UO_2$, the highest etching reaction rate is greater than 1000 monolayers/min. at $370^{\circ}C$ under 150 W r.f. power which is equivalent to $0.4{\mu}m/min$. As for Co, etching reaction begins to take place significantly when the temperature exceeds $350^{\circ}C$. Maximum etching rate achieved at $380^{\circ}C\;is\;0.06{\mu}m/min$. Mo etching reaction takes place vigorously even at relatively low temperature and the reaction rate increases drastically with increasing temperature. Highest etching rate at $380^{\circ}C\;is\;1.9{\mu}m/min$. According to OES (Optical Emission Spectroscopy) and AES (Auger Electron Spectroscopy) analysis, primary reaction seems to be a fluorination reaction, but carbonyl compound formation reaction may assist the dominant reaction, especially in case of Co and Mo. Through this basic study, the feasibility and the applicability of plasma decontamination technique are demonstrated.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.211-215
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• 2017

Reactive Ion Etching (RIE) and wet etching are employed in existing texturing processes to fabricate solar cells. Laser etching is used for particular purposes such as selective etching for grooves. However, such processes require a higher level of cost and longer processing time and those factors affect the unit cost of each process of fabricating solar cells. As a way to reduce the unit cost of this process of making solar cells, an atmospheric plasma source will be employed in this study for the texturing of crystalline silicon wafers. In this study, we produced the atmospheric plasma source and examined its basic properties. Then, using the prepared atmospheric plasma source, we performed the texturing process of crystalline silicon wafers. The results obtained from texturing processes employing the atmospheric plasma source and employing RIE were examined and compared with each other. The average reflectance of the specimens obtained from the atmospheric plasma texturing process was 7.88 %, while that of specimens obtained from the texturing process employing RIE was 8.04 %. Surface morphologies of textured wafers were examined and measured through Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and similar shapes of reactive ion etched wafers were found. The Power Conversion Efficiencies (PCE) of the solar cells manufactured through each process were 16.97 % (atmospheric plasma texturing) and 16.29 % (RIE texturing).

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.2 no.3
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• pp.7-11
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• 2003

In this research, the etching characteristics of via contact and deep contact hole have been studied using multi-pole inductively coupled plasma(MICP) etching system. We investigated Plasma density of MICP source using the Langmuir probe and etching characteristics with RF frequency, wall temperature, chamber gap, and gas chemistry containing Carbon and Fluorine. As the etching time increases, formation of the polymer increases. To improve the polymer formation, we controlled the temperature of the reacting chamber, and we found that temperature of the chamber was very effective to decrease the polymer thickness. The deep contact etch profile and high selectivity(oxide to photoresist) have been achieved with the optimum mixed gas ratio containing C and F and the temperature control of the etching chamber.