In spite of its high cost and technical importance, plasma equipment is still largely designed empirically, with little help from computer simulation. Plasma process control is rudimentary. Optimization of plasma reactor operation, including adjustments to deal with increasingly stringent controls on plant emissions, is performed predominantly by trial and error. There is now a strong and growing economic incentive to improve on the traditional methods of plasma reactor and process design, optimization, and control. An obvious strategy for both chip manufacturers and plasma equipment suppliers is to employ large-scale modeling and simulation. The major roadblock to further development of this promising strategy is the lack of a database for the many physical and chemical processes that occur in the plasma. The data that are currently available are often scattered throughout the scientific literature, and assessments of their reliability are usually unavailable.


Database Needs for Modeling and Simulation of Plasma Processing identifies strategies to add data to the existing database, to improve access to the database, and to assess the reliability of the available data. In addition to identifying the most important needs, this report assesses the experimental and theoretical/computational techniques that can be used, or must be developed, in order to begin to satisfy these needs.


Table of Contents


Front Matter
FINDINGS
CONCLUSIONS
RECOMMENDATIONS
REFERENCES
PLASMA PROCESSING FOR SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING
PLASMA EQUIPMENT SUPPLIER PERSPECTIVES
CHIP MANUFACTURER PERSPECTIVES
RECOMMENDED PRIORITIES FOR DEVELOPMENT OF AN IMPROVED DATABASE
REFERENCES
TOOL SCALE MODELS
Barriers to Using Tool Scale Models
FEATURE SCALE MODELS
GENERAL ASSESSMENT OF MODELING STATE OF THE ART AND VISION OF
FUTURE CAPABILITY AND IMPLIED NEEDS
REFERENCES
TECHNIQUES FOR MEASUREMENTS OF GAS PHASE SPECIES
Information Resources
Roles of the Database In Motivating Diagnostic Experiments
SURFACE REACTION DATABASE AND DIAGNOSTICS
New Diagnostic Techniques
FINDINGS
REFERENCES
STATE OF THE DATABASE
Incident Flux and Desorbing Flux Analysis
Condition of the Surface
Particle Beams
Substrate Temperature Dependence
FINDINGS
REFERENCES
Molecules
Neutral Dissociation
MOMENTUM TRANSFER, SWARM, AND DISCHARGE MEASUREMENTS
GENERAL COMMENTS
REFERENCES
INTRODUCTION
Ion-Molecule and Charge Exchange Reactions
Ion-Ion Neutralization
Neutral Chemistry
Status of the Database
Excited State Chemistry and Penning Ionization
Summary
THERMOCHEMICAL DATA
REFERENCES
Appendix A: Acronyms and Abbreviations
Appendix B: Workshop Agenda
Appendix C: Workshop Participants