Patent · US Expired

Method of isotropically dry etching a polysilicon containing runner with pulsed power

US5160408A · kind A · utility

37Cited by
11References
14Claims
0Family size

Assignee

Inventor

Key dates

Filing dateApr 27, 1990
Grant dateNov 3, 1992
Priority date
Expiry dateApr 27, 2010

Classification

  • Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
  • CPC primaryH01L21/32137
  • WIPO fieldSemiconductors
  • WIPO sectorElectrical engineering

Abstract

Disclosed is a method of isotropically dry etching a current conducting runner comprising polysilicon material which is formed on a silicon substrate wafer containing integrated semiconductor circuits. The method employs a parallel plate reactor which is controllable to provide intermittent pulses of power over the parallel plates. Gases are injected to within the reactor to provide a reactive gas mixture at a preselected pressure. Preselected intermittent pulses of power are applied to ionize the reactive gas mixture into a plasma state. Such intermittent pulses are defined by an RFon period, an RFoff period, and an RFrepeat period. The ratio of RFon:RFrepeat is preferably from about 0.35 to 0.60. The wafer is subjected to the intermittent pulses and reactive gas mixture at the preselected pressure for a preselected amount of time to selectively isotropically etch the current conducting runner. The invention has specific application to isotropically dry etching a WSi.sub.x /polysilicon sandwich structure. With such a structure, the preferred reactive gas mixture is SF.sub.6, Cl.sub.2, O.sub.2, and an inert carrier gas in approximate respective volume ratios of 10.0.+-.5%:2.0.+-.5%…

Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.