Inductively coupled plasma reactive ion etching (ICP-RIE) of copper thin films patterned with SiO₂ hard masks was carried out using piperidine/O₂/Ar gas mixture. The etch rate, etch selectivity, and etch profile of copper thin films were investigated by varying gas concentration in piperidine/O₂/Ar gas mixture. In addition, the etch parameters including ICP RF power, DC-bias voltage to substrate, and process pressure were varied to examine the etch characteristics. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and optical emission spectroscopy were employed to elucidate the etch mechanism under piperidine/O₂/Ar gas chemistry. Finally, 150 nm-line patterned copper thin films were successfully etched using piperidine/ O₂/Ar etch gas under the optimized etch conditions.

In this paper, we carried out the investigations of both etch characteristics and mechanisms for the SnO2 thin films in O2/BCl3/Ar plasma. The dry etching characteristics of the SnO2 thin films was studied by varying the O2/BCl3/Ar gas mixing ratio. We determined the optimized process conditions that were as follows: a RF power of 700 W, a DC-bias voltage of -150 V, and a process pressure of 2 Pa. The maximum etch rate was 509.9 nm/min in O2/BCl3/Ar=(3:4:16 sccm) plasma. From XPS analysis, the etch mechanism of the SnO2 thin films in the O2/BCl3/Ar plasma can be identified as the ion-assisted chemical reaction while the role of ion bombardment includes the destruction of the metal-oxide bonds as well as the cleaning of the etched surface form the reaction products.

The etching characteristics of indium tin oxide (ITO) thin films in an O2/BCl3/Ar plasma were investigated. The etch rate of ITO thin films increased with increasing O2 content from 0 to 2 sccm in BCl3/Ar plasma, whereas that of ITO decreased with increasing O2 content from 2 sccm to 6 sccm in BCl3/Ar plasma. The maximum etch rate of 65.9 nm/m in for the ITO thin films was obtained at 2 sccm O2 addition. The etch conditions were the RF power of 500 W, the bias power of 200 W, the process pressure of 15 mTorr, and the substrate temperature of 40℃. The analysis of x-ray photo electron spectroscopy (XPS) was carried out to investigate the chemical reactions between the surfaces of ITO thin films and etch species.