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US 6,149,761 AGranted
Etching apparatus and etching system using the method thereof
AssigneeSumitomo Metal Industries, Ltd.
InventorsToshiya Miyazaki, Toshihiro Hayami, Tadao Nakatsuka, Hiroyuki Tanaka, Toshiyuki Nakamura
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Abstract
A method for detecting an etching endpoint and a plasma etching apparatus and a plasma etching system using such a device are disclosed, in which time series data of a signal corresponding to the amount of light of the plasma light generated during the plasma etching process are arithmetically processed, so that the change of light amount is corrected and an etching endpoint is detected from the time series data after the correction.
Claims5
A plasma etching apparatus comprising:
- a vacuum processing chamber;
- electrodes arranged in said vacuum processing chamber, with an object being placed on one of said electrodes and a high frequency voltage being to be applied to said electrodes;
- means for introducing a process gas into said vacuum processing chamber;
- means for exhausting said vacuum processing chamber;
- a detection window formed a wall of said vacuum processing chamber;
- and
- a system for detecting an etching endpoint based on plasma light detected by way of the detection window, wherein said etching endpoint detection system includes:
- means for receiving the plasma light through said detection window and photoelectrically transducing said plasma light into a photoelectrically transduced signal;
- means for producing a time series data including a plurality of data values of the photoelectrically transduced signal;
- correcting means for digitally correcting the change of light amount due to changes in the quality of the received plasma light for an arithmetic operation performed on said time series data;
- and
- means for detecting an etching endpoint from the corrected time series data.
9 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.