Tokyo Electron Limited

Yuji Otsuka

Eiji Suzuki

Kazushi Kaneko

Hiroshi Tsujimoto

Hiroto Ohtake

Akinori Kitamura

Masayuki Kohno

Hideo Kato

Toshifumi Nagaiwa

Yusuke Takino

Kazunori Funazaki

Shinji Kawada

Akira Nakagawa

Tomiko Kamada

Yutaka Osada

A microwave automatic matcher includes a movable body, a driving unit, a matching control unit, a reflection coefficient measuring unit, and a setting unit. The matching control unit consecutively moves the movable body from a start position in one direction by a distance of a difference between the start position and the target position in a matching operation carried out for the plasma process and then variably controls the position of the movable body until the measurement of the reflection coefficient obtained by the reflection coefficient measuring unit falls within the first neighboring range by monitoring the measurement of the reflection coefficient.

Microwave automatic matcher and plasma processing apparatus

An isotropic etching process can be performed with high uniformity. A plasma etching method of etching an etching target layer containing silicon includes preparing a processing target object having the etching target layer in a processing chamber; removing an oxide film on a surface of the etching target layer by generating plasma of a first processing gas that contains a fluorocarbon gas or a fluorohydrocarbon gas but does not contain oxygen; removing a carbon-based reaction product generated when the removing of the oxide film by generating plasma of a second processing gas that does not contain oxygen; and etching the etching target layer without applying a high frequency bias power to a lower electrode serving as a mounting table configured to mount the processing target object thereon by generating plasma of a third processing gas containing a fluorocarbon gas or a fluorohydrocarbon gas with a microwave.

Plasma etching method

There is provided a plasma etching method for forming a hole in a silicon oxide film formed on an etching stopper layer. The plasma etching method includes a main etching process for etching the silicon oxide film; and an etching process that is performed when at least a part of the etching stopper layer is exposed after the main etching process. The etching process includes a first etching process using a gaseous mixture of a CFgas, an Ar gas and an Ogas as the processing gas; and a second etching process using a gaseous mixture of a CFgas, an Ar gas and an Ogas or a gaseous mixture of a CFgas, an Ar gas and an Ogas as the processing gas. The first etching process and the second etching process are alternately performed plural times.

Plasma etching method, semiconductor device manufacturing method and computer-readable storage medium

In a plasma processing method, a conductor of an electrostatic chuck (ESC) and an electrode are electrically grounded prior to starting the plasma processing. A DC voltage with a polarity is applied to the conductor at a first time point after loading a substrate on the electrode. Then, the electrode is switched from an electrically grounded state to an electrically floating state at a second time point. A RF power is then applied to the electrode at a third time point. The application of the RF power is stopped at a fourth time point after a specified time has lapsed from the third time point. Then, the electrode is switched from the electrically floating state to the electrically grounded state at a fifth time point. Thereafter, the application of the DC voltage is stopped and the conductor is restored to a ground potential at a sixth time point.

Plasma processing method and apparatus

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Miyagi, Japan

Yuji Otsuka