A comparative study of both plasma parameters and reactive-ion etching kinetics of silicon in CF4 + Ar/He and CHF3 + Ar/He gas mixtures was carried out. It was shown that the substitution of argon by helium a) disturbs electro-physical plasma parameters; and b) causes decrease in both fluorine atom formation rate and density. The latter lowers silicon etching rate, but results in increasing effective probability for Si + xF → SiFx heterogeneous reaction at nearly constant surface temperature. This phenomenon is due to decreasing plasma polymerizing ability.
Alexander Efremov (Wed,) studied this question.