Investigation of Kinetic Mechanism for Ion-Assisted Etching of Si in Cl sub 2

This paper reports the results of a modulated ion beam study of the ion-assisted etching of Si using Cl sub 2 gas and Ar sup + ions. These experiments were designed to study the kinetic mechanism of the ion-enhanced surface reaction of Si with Cl sub 2, which is thought to be responsible for anisotropic etching of Si in practical plasma systems. Pulses of Ar sup + ions (typically 12 ms long) were incident on the surface with ion fluxes ranging up to 4.5x10 sup 14 ions/cm sup 2 s and ion energies between 0.3 and 3 keV.