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Poster Session II

4:30 pm – 6:30 pm, Wednesday October 15 Session DW5 COEX, Lobby E
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Investigation of Neutral Gas Heating Effects in an Inductively Coupled Ar/C4F8 Plasma

Poster 44
Presenter: Su-Gi An (Gyungsang National University)
Authors: Gyu-Bin Kim (Gyungsang National University), Se-Bin An (Gyungsang National University), Ji-Won Jeong (Gyungsang National University), Ju-Hong Cha (Gyeongsang National University)

Low-temperature fluorocarbon plasmas are widely utilized in material processing, particularly in reactive ion etching (RIE). Accurate modeling of neutral species transport and thermal behavior is essential for process optimization. In this study, a two-dimensional axisymmetric fluid model of an inductively coupled Ar/ C4F8 plasma was developed to investigate the influence of neutral collisional enthalpy changes on gas heating and overall plasma dynamics. The model incorporates heat transfer and Navier–Stokes equations to resolve spatial variations in neutral gas temperature, addressing limitations of conventional isothermal plasma models. Parametric studies were performed by varying input power (200–600 W), pressure (20–60 mTorr), and Ar : C4F8 gas ratios (0.2–0.5). Simulation results indicate that gas heating driven by neutral collisions significantly alters plasma behavior. These findings were validated against experimental radical density measurements using quadrupole mass spectrometry (QMS) under various process conditions. The results show that incorporating thermal effects into plasma modeling enables more accurate predictions of the etching process.

Funding acknowledgement

This work was supported by the Technology Innovation Program (Grant No. RS-2023-00265582) funded by the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy [MOTIE, Korea (Grant No. 1415188192)].

POSTERS (88)