Neutral beam processing of semiconductor materials

This is the final report of a one-year, Laboratory-Directed Research and Development (LDRD) project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL). The most important challenge facing the US and global microelectronics industry is to identify and develop the next generation of processing technology to produce device structures with dimensions substantially less than 0.25 microns. This project sought to develop controlled, contamination-free etching techniques that are more selective and less damaging than current methods, which are based on inducing surface chemical reactions by rather crude ion-damage mechanisms. The use of non-charged particle etching and cleaning processes in the production of memory and microprocessor chips has been identified by The National Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors as a new manufacturing technique that may aid in the quest for feature sizes of 0.1 micron and lower. The Hyperthermal Neutral Beam Facility at Los Alamos has demonstrated significant improvement over ion-assisted etching in experiments using energetic oxygen and chlorine atoms