Important plasma parameters for reactive ion etching processes, such as ion energy and ion flux density, could be extracted from a simple RF waveform analysis at the excitation electrode in a conventional cathode-coupled, parallelplate plasma RIE system. This analysis does not introduce any contamination or disturbances to the process. By using the extracted plasma parameters, surface damage and Contamination in Si substrates induced by reactive ion etching in a S i c 4 plasma were

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... Optimum RIE conditions were then confirmed by studying the relationship between these parameters and the etching performance. Furthermore, it was demonstrated through the experimental data that low-energy highflux etching is the direction for high performance RIE in future ULSI fabrication.