Advances in low GWP etch gasses

Fluorinated species are ubiquitous in semiconductor manufacturing, yet are known to have global warming potentials thousands of times higher than CO₂. As abatement technologies are not completely effective and add additional costs, interest in reducing these emissions increases with semiconductor manufacturing volumes. We explore alternative chemistries for common plasma etch applications that retain patterning performance but with near zero GWP. Spectroscopic identification and quantification of etch byproducts is presented to demonstrate the beneficial environmental impacts of transitioning from the most common etch gasses.