Balanced electron drift oxide etcher with Xe added gas chemistry for low cost and high performance contact metallization

A new plasma source called balanced electron drift (BED) magnetron plasma was developed for SiO/sub 2/ contact/via hole etching. E/spl times/B drift of electrons, which is notorious for degrading the uniformity of magnetron plasmas (Sekine et al, 1995), has been completely balanced by applying appropriate 100 MHz RF power to the upper ring electrode. As a result, highly uniform self bias voltage (/spl Delta/V/sub DC/<4 V) and ion flux (/spl Delta/J/sub ion/