Influence of pulsed bias frequency on the etching of magnetic tunneling junction materials

The effect of different bias frequencies during the etching of magnetic tunneling junction materials in an inductively coupled plasma with rf pulse biasing (50% duty percentage) on etch characteristics was investigated. The decrease of rf bias frequency from 13.56 MHz to 400 kHz while keeping the same average dc bias voltage at -300 V increased not only the etch rates of MTJ related materials but also the etch selectivities. We observe improved etch characteristics of CoFeB and CoPt, and also improved etch profiles of CoPt, CoFeB and MTJ (CoPt/MgO/CoFeB) masked with nanoscale W(100 nm)/Ti(20 nm)/Ru(5 nm) at lower bias frequencies. The observed improvements are attributed to the higher sputter yields due to the wider ion energy distribution (with increase high energy component) for the metal carbonyl related compounds formed during the etching of MTJ materials with CO/NH3 etchant gas. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.The project was supported by the SRC project No. 2011-IN-2219 and Samsung Electronics. The authors would like to thank Dr. Satyarth Suri and Dr. Bob Turkot in Intel Corporation for helpful discussion on the MRAM etching