St. Schneider and H. Kohlstedt

A reactive etch process to pattern noble metal electrodes is considered necessary for future generations of Dynamic Random Access Memories (DRAMs) integration and desirable for ferroelectric memory (FRAMs) applications. Conventional, sputter driven etch processes either yield in redeposition problems (fences) or in a severe sloping (CD loss) and are not acceptable for high density integration architectures. To systematica1ly investigate possible reactive etch process regions, characterized by volatile etch products, we used a reactive ion beam etching (RIBE) tool with a filament free ICP source, that gives us exact control over the beam energy and the current density , and a1lows to use reactive gases. An energy dispersive quadrupole mass spectrometer is fitted to the chamber for in situ monitoring.