Similar to silicon etching, in order to etch Silicon dioxide, an etchant with high anisotropy is required.
A very good wet chemical etchant for silicon dioxide with a high selectivity over silicon is HF (49% in water) [175], however, because
the etching is due to a wet chemical process, the memory hole sidewalls would be lost due to the etchant penetrating laterally into the SiO layer.
Some plasma etching processes for SiO
involve at least one of fluorine or carbon atom. SF
, NF
, CF
/O
, and CF
are generally isotropic, but can be made more anisotropic with a higher involvement of ion species.
Plasma etching of SiO
is most commonly performed with the injection of a fluorocarbon gas into the processing chamber, where it is ionized and accelerated
to the surface for etching [77]. There are many etchants which are selective over Si and are anisotropic, such as
CHF
/O
, C
F
, C
F
, and C
F
/CO/O
/Ar. High ratios of fluorine atoms versus carbon atoms are important in achieving a high selectivity
of SiO
over Si. An etchant such as CF
gas is a viable option, but the main issue regarding SiO
etching with fluorocarbons is the
deposition of precursors during the etching process. With CF
gas, the main deposition precursor is suggested in [86]
to be CF
gas and its deposition onto the SiO
surface must be considered when modeling the etching process. This deposition
effect affects the sidewall angles of the silicon dioxide.