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This study examined the effect of the antenna capacitance of an inductively coupled plasma (ICP) source, which was varied using an internal linear antenna, on the electrical and plasma characteristics of the ICP source. The inductive coupling at a given rf current increased with decreasing antenna capacitance. This was caused by a decrease in the inner copper diameter of the antenna made from coaxial copper/quartz tubing, which resulted in a higher plasma density and lower plasma potential. By decreasing the diameter of the copper tube from 25 to 10 mm, the plasma density of a plasma source size of 2750×2350 mm2 was increased from approximately 8×1010/cm3 to 1.5×1011/cm3 at 15 mTorr Ar and 9 kW of rf power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of a large-area plasma source with high density plasmas is desired for a variety of plasma processes from microelectronics fabrication to flat panel display device fabrication. In this study, a novel internal-type linear inductive antenna referred to as “double comb-type antenna” was used for a large-area plasma source with the substrate area of 880 mm × 660 mm and the effect of plasma confinement by applying multi-polar magnetic field was investigated. High density plasmas on the order of 3.2 × 1011 cm−3 which is 50% higher than that obtained for the source without the magnetic field could be obtained at the pressure of 15 mTorr Ar and at the inductive power of 5,000 W with good plasma stability. The plasma uniformity <3% could be also obtained within the substrate area. When SiO2 film was etched using the double comb-type antenna, the average etch rate of about 2,100 Å/min could be obtained with the etch uniformity of 5.4% on the substrate area using 15 mTorr SF6, 5,000 W of rf power, and −34 V of dc-bias voltage. The higher plasma density with an excellent uniformity and a lower rf antenna voltage obtained by the application of the magnetic field are related to the electron confinement in a direction normal to the antenna line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]