Abstract
Usefulness in plasma processing is demonstrated for a plasma produced in a closed magnetic neutral loop, which consists of zero magnetic field points connected continuously. A preliminary experiment was carried out to show the advantage of magnetic neutral loop discharge (NLD) plasma in sputter etching processing of SiO2/Si wafer in the lower Ar gas pressure range. The experiment shows that a high-density plasma was obtained for Ar gas lower than 0.1 Pa and the sputter etching rate is 3 times higher than that for the usual inductively coupled plasma (ICP). In a large-loop case, the sputter etching profile obtained has a peak at a radius along the azimuthal direction. This implies that a uniform etching profile could be realized by controlling the radius of the neutral loop during process operation. The NLD plasma current induced with an rf primary one-turn antenna coil reaches up to one-third of that of the primary.