Comparative analysis of barium titanate thin films dry etching using inductively coupled plasmas by different fluorine-based mixture gas

Abstract In this work, the inductively coupled plasma etching technique was applied to etch the barium titanate thin film. A comparative study of etch characteristics of the barium titanate thin film has been investigated in fluorine-based (CF 4 /O 2 , C 4 F 8 /O 2 and SF 6 /O 2 ) plasmas. The etch rates were measured using focused ion beam in order to ensure the accuracy of measurement. The surface morphology of etched barium titanate thin film was characterized by atomic force microscope. The chemical state of the etched surfaces was investigated by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. According to the experimental result, we monitored that a higher barium titanate thin film etch rate was achieved with SF 6 /O 2 due to minimum amount of necessary ion energy and its higher volatility of etching byproducts as compared with CF 4 /O 2 and C 4 F 8 /O 2 . Low-volatile C-F compound etching byproducts from C 4 F 8 /O 2 were observed on the etched surface and resulted in the reduction of etch rate. As a result, the barium titanate films can be effectively etched by the plasma with the composition of SF 6 /O 2 , which has an etch rate of over than 46.7 nm/min at RF power/inductively coupled plasma (ICP) power of 150/1,000 W under gas pressure of 7.5 mTorr with a better surface morphology.