Improvement of Cr dry etching characteristics with the MERIE system

Dry etching characteristics of Cr films were investigated and some improvements have ben done with magnetically enhanced reactive ion etching (MERIE) system. Clear field patterns and ark field ones exposed on thin EB resists, whose thickness was less than 300 nm, were etched. Although there had been some difficulties in etching of clear-field pattens with SAL-601, these situations were much improved with an appropriate etching condition of magnetic field. It was found that magnetic field intensity affected Cr etching distributions very much. In marked contrast to the above results, MFI condition showed little contributions to the etching distribution of dark field patterns exposed on ZEP- 7000. It was shown that some waveforms of magnetic field could be effective to improve the etching characteristics for the plate whose etching area was extremely small. Etching characteristics for these extremely varied Cr-loaded are considered through the above etching results. Discussions about more useful dry etching process with MERIE system are also described.