A 2-DIMENSIONAL PARTICLE-IN-CELL SIMULATION OF AN ELECTRON-CYCLOTRON-RESONANCE ETCHING TOOL

A particle-in-cell (PIG) simulation of an axisymmetric electron-cyclotron-resonance (ECR) etching tool is developed in which up to 2x10(6) particles per species are loaded in a two-dimensional spatial computational mesh (r,z), along with three velocity components (upsilon(r),upsilon(theta),upsilon(z)). An ECR heating scheme based on single-particle trajectories in the resonance zone generates the simulated plasma. Electron- and ion-neutral elastic and inelastic collisions are treated by a null. Monte Carlo collision method. The code generates the electron and ion-velocity distributions, plasma potentials, and densities in a CF3+/CF4 etching plasma. In addition, a novel scaling technique which bridges the gap between the ion and electron-time scales and accelerates the rate of convergence of the code is introduced for a PIC code. The predictions of the code show that microwaves are completely absorbed before reaching the exact location of resonance. (C) I995 American Institute of Physics.