ETCH CHARACTERIZATION OF A BROAD-BEAM ELECTRON-CYCLOTRON RESONANCE ION-SOURCE

We present some of the ion beam and etch characteristics of a broad-beam electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) ion source. The source offers two modes of operations suitable for uniform ion beam etching. The low energy mode, 25<E<200 eV, is characterized by 0.30-1 mA/cm2ion density with the beam uniformity, within ± 5%, spanning over 10 cm of the beam diameter. Argon beam etching of gold and aluminum targets give etch rates of 349–2183 A/min and 277–834 A/min for each material, respectively. A preliminary reactive ion beam etching of aluminum targets with Cl2indicates an increase in the etching rates by factors of 1.5 to 2 over argon ion beam etching. © 1990, American Vacuum Society. All rights reserved.