This tutorial demonstrates the role of temperature in chemical reactions during cryogenic etching, highlighting adsorption mechanisms and advanced processes.
Abstract Cooling the substrate to stimulate chemical reactions can seem rather counterintuitive. However, this is one of the advantages often observed in plasma cryogenic etching. This article discusses the interactions between plasma and the surface at low temperature. It begins by reviewing the fundamental theories of adsorption as applied to etching. The theoretical concepts are then illustrated in the second part of the article by two different cryogenic processes developed and studied as part of research programs: the reinforcement of the SiOxFy passivation layer in the STiGer cryogenic deep silicon etching process and cryogenic Atomic Layer Etching (cryo-ALE) of SiO₂ from physisorbed C₄F₈ molecules.
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Dussart et al. (2025) studied this question.
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