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Abstract |
The physics and chemistry of plasma–surface interaction is a broad domain relevant to various applications and several natural processes, including plasma etching for microelectronics fabrication, plasma deposition, surface functionalization, nanomaterial synthesis, fusion reactors, and some astrophysical and meteorological phenomena. Due to their complex nature, each of these processes is generally investigated in separate subdomains, which are considered to have their own theoretical, modeling, and experimental challenges. In this review, however, we want to emphasize the overarching nature of plasma–surface interaction physics and chemistry, by focusing on the general strategy for its computational simulation. In the first half of the review, we provide a menu card with standard and less standardized computational methods to be used for the multiscale modeling of the underlying processes. In the second half, we illustrate the benefits and potential of the multiscale modeling strategy with a case study of Si and SiO2 etching by fluorocarbon plasmas and identify the gaps in knowledge still present on this intensely investigated plasma–material combination, both on a qualitative and quantitative level. Remarkably, the dominant etching mechanisms remain the least understood. The resulting new insights are of general relevance, for all plasmas and materials, including their various applications. We therefore hope to motivate computational and experimental scientists and engineers to collaborate more intensely on filling the existing gaps in knowledge. In this way, we expect that research will overcome a bottleneck stage in the development and optimization of multiscale models, and thus the fundamental understanding of plasma–surface interaction. |
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Notes |
Asml; P. Vanraes acknowledges funding by ASML for the project “Computational simulation of plasma etching of trench structures.” P. Vanraes wishes to thank Violeta Georgieva and Stefan Tinck for the fruitful discussions on the HPEM code, Yu-Ru Zhang for an example of the CCP reactor code, and Karel Venken for his technical help with the server maintenance and use. P. Vanraes and A. Bogaerts want to express their gratitude to Mark J. Kushner (University of Michigan) for the sharing of the HPEM and MCFPM codes and for the interesting exchange of views. S. P. Venugopalan wishes to thank Sander Wuister, Coen Verschuren, Michael Kubis, Mohammad Kamali, |
Approved |
Most recent IF: 13.667 |
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