Charging effects of plasma impact on microconductor structures on an insulator in plasma processing technologies

• Modeling of charging at plasma action to microwire on insulator has been made.
• The code KARAT with specially developed mathematical model was applied.
• Ion stream focusing and angle dispersion cause the heterogeneity of the wire etching.

When creating nanoelectronic devices conventional plasma technologies are faced with the increasing role of the charge accumulation on the treated surfaces. In this paper we present the results of computer simulation of the effect of charge accumulation on features of plasma action to structure “a conductor on an insulator”. The simulation was carried out using the KARAT code, applying a mathematical model based on Maxwell equations with the various material equations. An important feature of the model is that the transverse dimension of the conductor is much smaller than the Debye radius of the surrounding plasma.Calculations have shown that the ion beam appears to be not only strongly non-uniform over the cathode width (the beam width occupies 0.2 of the cathode width), but also is spread over a large range of arrival angles on the cathode. Although in this work qualitative results are presented from calculations based on conditional parameters of the system, the model allows quantitative simulation of an actual practical situation in the plasma reactor, including pulse modulation of plasma parameters.