Fast (tens to hundreds of eV) neutral beams for materials processing

Fast neutral beams (beam energy of tens to hundreds of eV) may be useful for mitigating charging damage that can occur in conventional plasma processing of materials. For neutral beam processing to be viable, however, the beam energy, flux and directionality must be comparable to those in traditional reactive ion etching or reactive ion beam technologies. This paper provides a review of fast neutral beams for materials processing. Neutral beam generation techniques are outlined. Characterization of neutral beams is important to measure the beam flux, energy and angular distributions. Neutral beam materials processing is discussed with emphasis on etching of thin films.