A system and method for etching workpieces in a uniform manner are disclosed. The system includes a semiconductor processing system that generates a ribbon ion beam, and a workpiece holder that scans the workpiece through the ribbon ion beam. The workpiece holder includes a portion that extends beyond the workpiece, referred to as a halo. The halo may be independently heated to compensate for etch rate non-uniformities. In some embodiments, the halo may be independently biased such that its potential is different from the potential applied to the workpiece. In certain embodiments, the halo may be divided into a plurality of thermal zones that can be separately controlled. In this way, various etch rate non-uniformities may be addressed by controlling the potential and/or temperature of the various thermal zones of the halo.

Provided is a machining technology to obtain a desired machining content while suppressing a possibility of causing a redeposition in a machining surface. The invention is directed to provide an ion milling device which includes an ion source which emits an ion beam, a sample holder which holds a sample, and a sample sliding mechanism which slides the sample holder in a direction including a normal direction of an axis of the ion beam.

The present disclosure provides a system and method for controlling a dynamically controllable ultrawide-amplitude and high-response ion source, including: resolving dwell time of ion beam machining during iterative machining; selecting an appropriate velocity V of a movable shaft of a machine tool according to a calculation result of the dwell time; and dynamically calculating process parameters of an ion source according to an initial surface error of an optical component and the velocity V of the movable shaft, and generating a corresponding numerical control (NC) program to machine the optical component. The present disclosure can control the removal function of the ion beam polishing in real time, improve the precision and efficiency of the ion beam polishing, and further reduce the requirement on a movement system of the machine tool and the depth of a damaged layer.

An ion gun according to one embodiment of the present invention has an anode, a cathode having a first portion and a second portion that face the anode, and a magnet that creates a spatial magnetic field between the first portion and the second portion. An annular gap including a curved portion is provided between the first portion and the second portion of the cathode. The magnet creates lines of magnetic field having the bottom inside with respect to the sectional center line of the gap between the first portion and the second portion of the curved portion.

A substrate processing method capable of improving etch selectivity without increasing the power includes: forming a first thin film on a structure; forming a material layer having wet etch resistance greater than that of the first thin film on the first thin film; removing a portion of the material layer using wet etching to expose a portion of the first thin film; and removing the exposed portion of the first thin film.

Methods and apparatus for processing a substrate are provided herein. For example, a method for processing a substrate includes applying at least one of low frequency RF power or DC power to an upper electrode formed from a high secondary electron emission coefficient material disposed adjacent to a process volume; generating a plasma comprising ions in the process volume; bombarding the upper electrode with the ions to cause the upper electrode to emit electrons and form an electron beam; and applying a bias power comprising at least one of low frequency RF power or high frequency RF power to a lower electrode disposed in the process volume to accelerate electrons of the electron beam toward the lower electrode.

The present disclosure provides a method to adjust asymmetric velocity of a scan in a scanning ion beam etch process to correct asymmetry of etching between the inboard side and the outboard side of device structures on a wafer, while maintaining the overall uniformity of etch across the full wafer.

Improved process flows and methods are provided herein for forming a passivation layer on sidewall surfaces of openings formed in an amorphous carbon layer (ACL) to avoid bowing during an ACL etch process. More specifically, improved process flows and methods are provided to form a silicon-containing passivation layer on sidewall surfaces of the openings created within the ACL without utilizing atomic layer deposition (ALD) techniques or converting the silicon-containing passivation layer to an oxide or a nitride. As such, the improved process flows and methods disclosed herein may be used to protect the sidewall surfaces of the ACL and prevent bowing during the ACL etch process, while also reducing processing time and improving throughput.

A system and method for etching workpieces in a uniform manner are disclosed. The system includes a semiconductor processing system that generates a ribbon ion beam, and a workpiece holder that scans the workpiece through the ribbon ion beam. The workpiece holder includes a plurality of independently controlled thermal zones so that the temperature of different regions of the workpiece may be separately controlled. In certain embodiments, etch rate uniformity may be a function of distance from the center of the workpiece, also referred to as radial non-uniformity. Further, when the workpiece is scanned, there may also be etch rate uniformity issues in the translated direction, referred to as linear non-uniformity. The present workpiece holder comprises a plurality of independently controlled thermal zones to compensate for both radial and linear etch rate non-uniformity.

A system is provided for in-situ ion beam etch rate or deposition rate measurement, including: a vacuum chamber; an ion beam source configured to direct an ion beam onto a first surface of a sample located within the vacuum chamber and to etch the first surface of the sample with an etch rate; or a material source configured to deposit material onto a first surface of a sample located within the vacuum chamber with a deposition rate; and an interferometric measurement device located at least partially within the vacuum chamber and configured to direct light onto a second surface of the sample and to determine the etch rate of the ion beam or the deposition rate of the deposited material in-situ based on light reflected from the sample.