Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. Vol. 35 (1996) pp.
L 1130-L 1133
Part 2, No. 9A, 1 September 1996
Balanced Inductive Plasma Sources
Georgy K. V INOGRADOV* and Shimao YONEYAMA
MC Electronics Co. Ltd., 907-8 Shimoimasuwa, Shirane-cho, Nakakomagun, Yamanashi 400-02, Japan
(Received June 3, 1996; accepted for publication July 29, 1996)
An approach is proposed for the design of powerful inductive sources with internally compensated anti-phase
RF capacitive currents. It is shown that the total internal balance of both capacitive currents and RF magnetic
field exist in a full wave helical resonator source. The new plasma source exhibits peculiar plasma phenomena
having a clear physical interpretation.
KEYWORDS: inductive plasma source, full wave helical resonator, high-density plasma, radical source
The term "inductive plasma source" refers t o any
plasma source which includes an inductive element (in-
ductor) which supplies R F electromagnetic energy into
discharges: e.g., cylindrical coil, flat spiral, and helicon
antennas. It is usually believed that inductive discharges
provide plasmas with low R F and DC potentials. These
characteristics are important in numerous industrial ap-
plications.
However, all inductive plasma sources inevitably have
both inductive and capacitive coupling t o plasmas.
Moreover, the latter can even determine the kind of gen-
erated plasma. An R F voltage distributed along the in-
ductor generates capacitive currents into plasma produc-
ing high R F plasma potential in the bulk and a secondary
plasma near R F grounded surfaces, i.e., wafers.
The simplest way t o suppress capacitive coupling t o
plasma is t o electrically shield the plasma from the in-
ductor, as was proposed in the last century.') However,
this approach has obvious disadvantages: e.g., low en-
ergy efficiency, difficult discharge ignition, and it is cum-
bersome.
We have developed a simple and efficient solution of
the capacitive problem of inductive plasma sources. We
compensate inductor-plasma capacitive currents inside
an inductive source, and hence suppress any exterior ca-
pacitive plasma currents.
The conventional inductive sources also produce an R F
magnetic field which spreads outside the source. This
field is potentially harmful for any semiconductor pro-
cessing since it generates eddy currents in surface struc-
tures. We propose here a solution of this problem as
well.
For simplicity, consider amplitude distributions of R F
voltage and current along a cylindrical inductor (Fig. 1).
Any inductor can be analyzed this way. For the short in-
ductive coil a) with the electrical length of winding wire
much shorter than 1/4 wavelength, we see a monotoni-
cally increasing RF voltage and almost uniform current
distribution. Certainly, the inductor-plasma capacitive
current grows t o the "hot" end of the coil. This current
causes fluctuation of plasma potential with the discharge
excitation frequency and must be grounded.
All other inductive sources, including conventional
quarter- and half-wave helical resonators (HR) have the
same problem of capacitive coupling t o the ground. How-
ever, voltage and current are distributed as standing
*E-mail address: 100510,3707@compuserve.com
waves (SW) having corresponding local maxima and
minima of voltage, current, and R F magnetic fields.
The scheme is extended to the full wave HR (A-HR).
It is significant that a step from a conventional half-
wave t o the A-HR drastically changes inductor-plasma
interactions: capacitive phase and anti-phase currents
are coupled t o one another in the latter case. Therefore,
the fundamental frequency component of the inductor-
plasma-ground capacitive current is canceled completely.
Clearly, the R F fluctuation of plasma potential at fun-
damental frequency must be zero as well. The last phe-
nomenon is characteristic for symmetric capacitive dis-
charges2) and depends on their degree of s y m m e t r y . 2 , 3 )
Any inductive source with anti-symmetric (anti-phase)
R F potentials must function the same way. Ideally, such
a plasma source does not have any capacitive coupling
to the ground at the excitation frequency, hence, it must
not produce any secondary plasma near the grounded
surfaces outside the inductor.
As for the magnetic compensation, one can see that
the A-HR has three inductive parts providing anti-phase
currents with exactly zero total magnetic moment out-
side the inductor. Magnetic compensation occurs in a
conventional half-wave structure c) as well. However,
this merit of anti-symmetric current inductors has never
been taken into consideration.
We designed A-HR as shown in Fig. 2. The A-HR has
never been used as a plasma source. It was believed
t o be devoid of merits, cumbersome, and inconvenient
in comparison with, for example, the conventional half-
wave structure. However, the reverse seems t o be true in
the case of plasma excitation.
The R F 50 Ohm coaxial cable is connected directly t o the
discharge tybe capacitive balance
....................
I Coil ends can be open, grounded, or RF fed.
Fig. 1. RF current (I) and voltage (V) amplitude distributions
on cylindrical inductors: (a) "short" inductor; (b) quarter-wave
HR; (c) half-wave HR; (d) full-wave A-HR; (e) half-wave HR with
open ends. Coil ends are connected to the shield (grounded),
open and/or RF fed.
 -
Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. Vol. 35 (1996) Pt. 2, No. 9A
Al flange
235 rnm ID
1 gas input
50 ohm coaxial Al chamber
from RFgenerator /
stage
Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of the simplest full-wave helical res-
onator (A-HR) reactor.
corresponding point of the inductor without matching
elements. The plasma source is mounted on the chamber
above the movable grounded A1 electrode. Pure Ar and
O2were used as feed gases a t flow rates up to 3 slm and
in the 0.001-50Torr pressure range. The chamber was
pumped with a Roots blower and rotary pumps.
R F power at 26-28 MHz frequency up t o 2.25 kW was
supplied from the wide band tube amplifier IFI-410 with
the IFI-5300 pre-amplifier or from the Comdel 3000127
R F generator up to 3 kW at 27.12 MHz. The R F fre-
quency in the first case was fed from a signal generator.
The A-HR represents a highly symmetric R F struc-
ture by its very nature, hence it does not need sym-
metric excitation to provide highly symmetric current
and anti-symmetric voltage distributions. The first fac-
tor guarantees minimum RF magnetic and the second
one minimum electric, fields outside the source. Since
the R F discharge in A-HR has never been observed be-
fore, we describe it here in much details as~possible.The
A-HR discharge gives a very clear picture of capacitive
and inductive plasma phenomena, many of which can be
understood and interpreted with a fair degree of confi-
dence. This is because of the strictly defined localization
of inductive and capacitive interactions (SW structure)
and an optimum set of experimental conditions.
A clearly visible gas discharge can be initiated a t a
power of about 2-3 W and 0.001-0.01 Torr pressure in
air. Such an easy ignition is typical for HR due t o its high
quality factor Q (N l o 3 ) , and hence, very high voltage
on the coil even under the low power condition. The low
pressure discharge occupies all the free volume with the
power increase. Even low power discharge is very stable
since the HR interacts with plasma in the regime of a
high impedance generator of the capacitive current.
The low pressure discharge, which is important from
a practical point of view, provides no means of revealing
the internal structure of discharge or the distribution of
R F power dissipation due to fast diffusional mixing of
plasma components. Therefore, we intentionally used
moderate- and high-pressure conditions when the char-
acteristic diffusional lengths of the majority of plasma
G. K. VINOGRADOV and S. YONEYAMA L 1131
Fig. 3. Evolution of visible Ar plasma patterns a t 15-20Torr
pressure with RF power increase from about 50 t o 2000W in
a full-wave helical resonator: 1-low-power capacitive excitation,
clearly visible distribution of capacitive currents; 2-localized ball
plasmoids appear at the central plane; 3-central inductive toroid
is formed; 4-secondary ball plasmoids appear above the central
toroid; 5-ball plasmoids develop more complex structure; 6-ion-
gated capacitive current structures appear; 7-just two toroids ex-
ist; 8-pre-toroid plasma structure appears; 9-three toroids are
finally formed.
processes were essentially decreased. The transition from
diffusional t o volume charge loss causes the plasma to be
localized a t the place of its generation. Such conditions
are favorable for visualizing the spatial distribution and
features of RF power dissipation. It provides solid exper-
imental evidence of the mechanism of plasma generation.
Figure 3 shows the consequence of plasma phenomena
which accompany power increase in the A-HR Ar dis-
charge in the 10-20 Torr pressure range. After the initial
breakdown, which occurs under below about 100 watts, a
weak glow discharge appears. The plasma trends to the
tube surface and looks like a body of rotation. It never
spreads outside the inductor. Such a plasma shape could,
in principle, appear as a result of either capacitive or
inductive discharge. However, under the high-pressure
condition we can clearly discriminate these cases since
the plasma cannot diffuse far from the place of gener-
ation. Hence the inductive plasma cannot exist in the
cross-sectional planes of zero coil currents on both sides
of the inductor. That is, initially, only capacitive dis-
charge exists in the A-HR excited by the push-pull longi-
tudinal currents flowing between the high voltage parts
of the coil.
The further power increase causes a sudden appear-
ance of a 2-3-cm-diameter stable plasma ball at the cen-
tral plane of the A-HR. This plasmoid remains a t about
3-4cm from the tube wall. Then two more ball plas-
moids appear, and suddenly, a bright central plasma
L 1132 Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. Vol. 35 (1996) Pt. 2 , NO. 9A G. K. VINOGRADOV
and S. YONEYAMA

toroid forms instead of plasmoids. It is about 2-3 cm

in the cross section of the plasma channel, depending quartz
bundle of thin
on conditions. The capacitive plasma intensity abruptly
drops during this transformation. high current density
The toroid becomes brighter with increasing power. capacitive plasma
The new ball plasmoids and elongated structures con-
sisted of small connected balls originate as shown in t h e
Fig. 3. The plasmoids remain stationary or rotate around
the discharge axis. The rotation of upper and lower plas-
toroid
moids is in opposite direction in correspondence with
Lorenz forces affecting capacitive current plasma struc- bottom inductive
tures. The central toroid plays the role of a virtual toroid
ground electrode, and the capacitive currents flow from
the high voltage part of the inductor t o the toroid which Fig. 4. Simplified schemes of inductive and capacitive interac-
is strongly capacitively coupled t o the central zero volt- tions in of inductor plasma in a A-HR. Current and voltage
age part of the coil, since it is highly conductive and distributions and magnetic moments are shown. High-density
strongly pressed t o the tube wall. The further evolution plasma toroids represent individual one-turn plasma transform-
is well shown in Fig. 3. ers.
After all three toroids appear no more new structures
are formed up to 3 k W R F power. There is no visible
plasma above the grounded electrode at any time. New inductive structure
structures almost never appear with power decrease. The
whole picture strongly depends on the Ar purity.
In order t o check the nature of the toroids we have
inserted a bundle of thin Pyrex tubes filling the upper
space above the central toroid. There was a nonuniform
gap of about 1-12 mm between the bundle and wall. We
tried t o extinguish the top toroid. Figure 4 shows this
experimental design.
However, the top toroid appeared very easily despite / - v I
magnetic momentum
the use of the bundle. This toroid was different from capacitive structure
a conventional one; it appears very bright yellow only
about 1-cm-diameter plasma channel compressed be- high density
tween the bundle and the wall, which was as narrow inductive plasma
as about I mm thickness in some places but was never
broken. The color of plasma at such narrow gaps was
practically white, the Pyrex tubes contacting the plasma low density
capacitive plasma
in such places were condescend up t o about 700-800•‹C.
Clearly, the toroid represents a one turn plasma trans-
former and its current is constant along the plasma chan-
nel. The toroid can be very strongly distorted by t h e
Fig. 5 . Plasma structures in A-HR discharge with a dielectric in-
bundle, and its length can be increased by vertical bends. sert which constrains the top plasma toroid.
One more plasma phenomenon was observed for t h e
first time: collapse of the diffuse capacitive current be-
tween the top and central toroids into several plasma
strings. The bundle displaces capacitive currents to the of the resonator and the quality factor, which is typi-
near-wall area. Consequently, the capacitive current den- cally higher than 1000. Hence, even under 2-3 W of the
sity increases and the plasma becomes divided into the R F power the electric field strength near the resonator
contracted plasma strings. coil can be high enough (> 100V/cm) for electrical
Figure 5 shows equivalent R F schemes of inductive breakdown of the low-pressure gas. This breakdown oc-
and capacitive coupling of the inductor, divided for the curs and the quality factor immediately decreases, hence,
sake of simplicity into four quarter wave parts with the the R F voltage also decreases. Thus the initial dis-
plasma load. The capacitive structure can be repre- charge is generated by the resonator operating as a high
sented, at first approximation, as several high potential impedance current generator. This is a typical capacitive
and grounded electrodes. breakdown and discharge.
Consider the discharge phenomena from the initial The initial weak plasma occupies only an internal vol-
breakdown. When the R F power is too low t o initiate ume of the inductor. It is shaped as a body of rotation in
the discharge, the distributions of electric and magnetic correspondence with the longitudinal electric field lines.
fields in the resonator corresponds to an ideal non-loaded The capacitive current flows through the plasma between
resonator. The magnitude
- of electric field strength
- in the
the top and bottom voltage anti-phase halves of the in-
resonator is determined by the characteristic impedance ductor. It is not coupled t o the ground.
 Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. Vol. 35 (1996) P t . 2 , No. 9A
Since the plasma exists in the inductor, the inductive
current immediately appears, being generated by the cir-
cular magnetic field. However, this current is too small
t o provide the necessary ionization rate t o generate the
self-supporting inductive discharge. It has a negligible
effect since the capacitive plasma area has too low elec-
tric conductivity for inductive coupling of R F power.
As power is increased, the capacitive currents in-
crease in the plasma. This increases plasma conductivity
and creates longitudinal heat and ionization instabilities.
Naturally, the plasma cylinder can be partitioned into
several plasma strings shunting the whole high-voltage
area and concentrating the total capacitive current un-
der the high-power and high-pressure conditions.
The inductive current increases as well. Under the
condition that this current becomes capable of supplying
an ionization rate comparable t o that of the capacitive
current, inductive "breakdown" suddenly occurs. Such
an avalanchelike character is accounted for by the pos-
itive feed-back loop between the efficiency of inductive
coupling and the rate of ionization in the plasma toroid.
Since the plasma transformer is formed, it can efficiently
dissipate the R F power from the resonator: the discharge
configuration is changed. Clearly, the plasma toroid de-
creases the efficiency of R F capacitive coupling and the
total capacitive plasma power.
The term "inductive breakdown'' has a limited sense
and means only the formation of the self-supporting in-
ductive plasma toroid which needs a sufficiently high ini-
tial level of plasma conductivity t o be formed. The cri-
terion of inductive plasma could therefore be the ratio
between the inductive and capacitive current densities.
Nevertheless, it is also clear that the presence of induc-
tive plasma in some places does not exclude the existence
of capacitive plasma in another part of the discharge.
The A-HR can generate one, two or three inductive
toroids. The central one is about two times more pow-
erful than the side toroids. The central toroid appears
first since the primary capacitive preionization is concen-
trated near the discharge center. The inductive toroids
can easily be scaled up for the condition of constant am-
G. K. VINOGRADOV
and S. YONEYAMA L 1133
plitude of the total current.
The final important feature of the A-HR is an inter-
nal compensation of not only capacitive currents but
RF magnetic fields as well. It is clear from Fig. 5 that
side toroids have magnetic moments compensated by the
magnetic momentum of the central toroid. Such com-
pensation results from the current distribution along the
inductor which has zero total magnetic momentum itself.
It can be well understood that such compensation occurs
in a conventional short-ended half-wave HR structure as
well.
Since A-HR has neither capacitive current nor mag-
netic field effects spreading far outside the plasma source:
it can be placed directly above the processed surfaces.
Hence, it can be considered as a very powerful plasma
source of radicals. It was tested for oxygen ashing
of normal and heavily ion implanted polymer resists
(P+, As+; dose 1015-1016~ m - 70-80keV).
~ , The ashing
rate of normal resist a t 240•‹C was about 11micron/min
with an apparent activation energy of about 0.5 eV typ-
ical for the chemical ashing by atomic oxygen4) and
is much higher than the values typical for a plasma
a ~ h i n ~Ion
. ~ ) implanted and "after etch" resists were
ashed with excellent results as well. There was neither
plasma damage for different NMOS (n-channel metal-
oxide-semiconduictor) antenna structures nor surface
metal contamination found.
The A-HR creates a new generation of powerful induc-
tive plasma sources with localized plasma structures and
compensated capacitive currents and magnetic fields and
exhibits all typical features of such sources.
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and Technology, ed. H. Boenig (Technomic Publ., Lancaster,
Pa, 1986) p. 173.
2) R. R. J. Gagne and A. Cantin: J. Appl. Phys. 43 (1972) 2639.
3) V. A . Godyak and R. B. Piejak: J . Appl. Phys. 68 (1990) 3157.
4) J. M. Cook and B. W . Benson: J . Electrochem. Soc. 130 (1980)
2459; E. P. G. T . van der Ven and H. Kalter: Electrochem. Soc.
Ext. Abstr. 76-1 (1976) 332.
5) G. N. Tailor and T . M. Wolf: Polym. Eng. Sci. 20 (1980) 1087.