Simulation Of Reactive Ion Etching

The MEMS design and its experimental verification are a long term and high cost process, so it's necessary to simulate the MEMS process accurately and efficiently. At the same time, many processes are involved to manufacture MEMS devices, so the simulation of a series of manufacturing processes is desired to control the processes and optimize the parameters of processes efficiently. Since the etching rate of RIE(Reactive Ion Etching) process is large and RIE is a high selectivity anisotropic etching, RIE is widely used in the manufacturing of MEMS and it is one of the most important MEMS processes.RIE is a complicated process. Simulating RIE accurately is important to form a MEMS CAD system. Integrating the efficient and accurate simulation of RIE with simulation of other MEMS processes, for example isotropic deposition to form a MEMS CAD system is important for the design and manufacturing of MEMS.First, MEMS and MEMS CAD are introduced in brief. Secondly, the etching processes in common use are introduced in brief too. Thirdly, the models of RIE and algorithms of simulation in common use are introduced. After the mechanism of RIE is analyzed, the model used in this paper is introduced and analyzed in detail. The string algorithm is used to simulate the etching process and the string-cell hybrid algorithm is used to improve the simulation. The simulation software is finished by using C++. And finally, the software can simulate RIE process accurately. It can simulate etching process of the material under the asymmetric mask. It can simulate the Lag effect of RIE. It can simulate the etching process with variable process temperature and variable ion energy. It also can be integrated with simulation of other processes to simulate multiple processes. At last the result of a RIE process at a certain condition is compared with the results of simulation, the result of Lag effect is compared with result of simulation, the results of multiple processes are compared with the results of simulation, respectively, and they fit well.