Molecular dynamics simulations of large fluorine cluster impact on silicon with supersonic velocity

The etching process by very large reactive gas cluster impact was investigated by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Fluorine-molecule clusters with the size up to 100,000 atoms (50,000 F2 molecules) were irradiated on silicon (1 0 0) targets at supersonic velocity regime (0.1-1 eV/atom, 1.0-3.2 km/s). The MD simulations revealed that the existence of threshold energy-per-atom around 0.3 eV/atom (1.75 km/s) to cause surface deformation and enhancement of Si desorption. When the incident energy-per-atom is less than the threshold, the incident cluster breaks up itself on the target without surface deformation. The fluorine molecules in the cluster spread in the lateral direction along the target surface, and some part of them decompose and adsorbs on the target to form silicon fluoride composites. On the other hand, the clusters penetrate the surface of silicon target when the energy-per-atom is larger than 0.3 eV/atom. In these collisional processes, the target surface is deformed to create shallow crater shape. The incident fluorine molecules are preferentially concentrated at the bottom of the crater, which resulted in high desorption yield of silicon as in the form of SiF2, SiF3 and SiF4.