Control of silicon dioxide etching rate in hydrogen microwave plasma by addition of oxygen

Hydrogen plasma treatment of thin films and bulk silica is important process for surface cleaning, smoothing and patterning. We studied etching of SiO2 plates in H2 + O2 microwave plasma at moderate pressures at high temperatures in the range of 790-1300 degrees C. A low-coherent optical interferometer was used for simultaneous in situ measurement of etch rate (ER) and the SiO2 temperature. We show that even a small addition of O2 (<1%) in microwave H2 plasma can effectively reduce the SiO2 ER due to redox reaction. Using an optical profilometry and atomic force microscopy we observed not only a strong etching inhibition by O2 addition in gas, but a signifi-cantly smoother etched surface as well. The activation energies Ea = 128 +/- 8 kJ/mol and 276 +/- 23 kJ/mol are found for the etching in pure H2 and H2 + 0.4 %O2 plasmas, respectively. An exponential dependence of ER on O2 content in gas is established, particularly, the O2 concentration as small as 2.6 % is sufficient to reduce the ER by 100 times. The effect of oxygen induced etching slow-down is supported by thermodynamic consideration of the surface reactions involved. The experiments were complimented with the plasma diagnostics by optical emission plasma spectroscopy to detect volatile etching products, and other species such as OH, and correlate the Si emission intensity with the measured ER. Our results confirm the efficiency of oxygen to control in a wide range the etch rate and surface topography upon atomic hydrogen etching in a microwave plasma.