Selective etching mechanism of silicon oxide against silicon by hydrogen fluoride: a density functional theory study. Issue 5 (17th January 2023)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hidayat, Romel; Kim, Hye-Lee; Khumaini, Khabib; Chowdhury, Tanzia; Mayangsari, Tirta Rona; Cho, Byungchul; Park, Sangjoon; Lee, Won-Jun
• Is Part Of: Physical chemistry chemical physics. Volume 25:Issue 5(2023)
• Page Start: 3890
• Page End: 3899
• Publication Date: 2023-01-17
• Subjects: Chemistry, Physical and theoretical -- Periodicals; 541.3
• DOI: 10.1039/d2cp05456f
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1463-9076

Abstract

Abstract : The mechanism underlying the selective etching of silicon oxide against silicon by HF vapor was elucidated by DFT calculations that showed lower activation energies for silicon oxide than for silicon. Abstract : Selective etching of silicon oxide (SiO2 ) against silicon (Si) using anhydrous hydrogen fluoride (HF) vapor has been used for semiconductor device fabrication. We studied the underlying mechanism of the selective etching by density functional theory (DFT) calculation. We constructed surface slab models of SiO2 or Si with different degrees of fluorination and simulated the four steps of fluorination. The calculations show relatively low activation energies of 0.72–0.79 eV for the four steps of fluorination of SiO2, which are close to ∼0.69 eV observed in the experiment. The four-membered ring structure of –Si–O–H–F– in all transition states stabilized the system, resulting in relatively low activation energies. Thus, continuous etching of SiO2 by HF is plausible at near-room temperature. In contrast, the fluorinations of Si showed relatively high activation energies ranging from 1.22 to 1.56 eV due to the less stable transition state geometries. Thus, negligible etching of silicon by HF is expected by the near-room temperature process. Our calculation results explain well the experimental observation of the selective etching of SiO2 against Si by HF vapor.