Review highlights advances in plasma-enhanced atomic layer etching across diverse semiconductor materials, indicating viable pathways toward atomic-precision nanofabrication.
Key Points
To comprehensively synthesize recent advances in plasma-enhanced atomic layer etching (PEALE) mechanisms, hardware configurations, material applications, and multi-process integration frameworks.
Systematically reviewed recent experimental and theoretical PEALE literature published primarily since 2020.
Evaluated isotropic and anisotropic etching mechanisms across silicon-based dielectrics, III-V compounds, transition metal oxides and nitrides, 2D materials, and metallic thin films.
Analyzed hardware advancements in plasma sources, tailored bias configurations, and integration schemes including hybrid RIE+ALE and ALD+ALE.
PEALE provides deterministic, sub-atomic-scale material removal through complementary thermally activated isotropic and low-energy ion-driven anisotropic modalities, overcoming conventional reactive ion etching limitations.
Hardware innovations and hybrid integration protocols effectively govern surface roughness evolution across next-generation semiconductor platforms.