• typical process pressure: 0.5 - 5 mtorr
• plasma density: ca 5 x E¹¹ / cm³
• plasma in contact with the substrate
• low energy ion current during deposition
• Ion Current (Plasma Density) dependent on ECR power

Typical Applications:

• low damage etching of 3-5's
• sputter etching applications (Au, Pt)

ECR was introduced at OPT in 1985.

ICP was introduced much later (1991- 1995) for plasma processing.

most important with both:
independent control of ion energy and ion current density

ICP is fully automatic (2 RF automatch units)

ECR suffers from the manual or "semi-automatic" matching and the potential of "mode hopping", so it has been replaced by ICP !

• lower (substrate) electrode RF driven
• substrate electrode cooled
• thermal contact by He backside cooling
• automatic height adjustment of the electrode opt.
• gas inlet through source and through distribution ring
• high conductance pipework
• parameter: gas flows, pressure, ECR power, table power