Experimental and Theoretical Investigation on the Scale-Up of a Plasma Reactor

Abstract

To enlarge wafer size, plasma processing reactors must be scaled up. However, this change causes variations of the plasma parameters and gas residence time that are directly related to the processing results. To maintain these parameters as the chamber-size increases, accurate control of the external variables, such as the input power, gas pressure, and flow rate, is required. In this paper, these basic process parameters are calculated through 0-dimensional (global) plasma model including multistep ionizations and pumping equations, and applied to match the plasma parameters and gas residence time in experiment and simulation. These results can be used as a reference to determine the external variables as a chamber scales up.