journal article

Journal Article

Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology A: Vacuum, Surfaces and Films. 2015, 33(6), p. 060606

Sputtering yields and surface chemical modification of tin-doped indium oxide in hydrocarbon-based plasma etching

American Institute of Physics

English

2015-11

https://doi.org/10.1116/1.4927125

H. Li et al., Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A 33, 060606 (2015) https://doi.org/10.1116/1.4927125

Sputtering yields and surface chemical compositions of tin-doped indium oxide (or indium tin oxide, ITO) by CH⁺, CH<inf>3</inf>⁺, and inert-gas ion (He⁺, Ne⁺, and Ar⁺) incidence have been obtained experimentally with the use of a mass-selected ion beam system and in-situ x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. It has been found that etching of ITO is chemically enhanced by energetic incidence of hydrocarbon (CH<inf>x</inf>⁺) ions. At high incident energy incidence, it appears that carbon of incident ions predominantly reduce indium (In) of ITO and the ITO sputtering yields by CH⁺ and CH<inf>3</inf>⁺ ions are found to be essentially equal. At lower incident energy (less than 500eV or so), however, a hydrogen effect on ITO reduction is more pronounced and the ITO surface is more reduced by CH<inf>3</inf>⁺ ions than CH⁺ ions. Although the surface is covered more with metallic In by low-energy incident CH<inf>3</inf>⁺ ions than CH⁺ ions and metallic In is in general less resistant against physical sputtering than its oxide, the ITO sputtering yield by incident CH<inf>3</inf>⁺ ions is found to be lower than that by incident CH⁺ ions in this energy range. A postulation to account for the relation between the observed sputtering yield and reduction of the ITO surface is also presented. The results presented here offer a better understanding of elementary surface reactions observed in reactive ion etching processes of ITO by hydrocarbon plasmas.

This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing. This article appeared in Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A 33, 060606 (2015) and may be found at https://doi.org/10.1116/1.4927125.

78462

Sputtering yields and surface chemical modification of tin-doped indium oxide in hydrocarbon-based plasma etching

American Institute of Physics

English

2015-11

Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology A: Vacuum, Surfaces and Films

33

6

060606

https://doi.org/10.1116/1.4927125

https://hdl.handle.net/11094/78462