Patent ID: 11967485
Assignee: TOKYO ELECTRON LIMITED
Field: Electrical machinery, apparatus, energy (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 11:
12. A plasma processing method of performing a plasma processing on a substrate with a plasma processing apparatus,
wherein the plasma processing apparatus includes:
a chamber having a processing space in which the plasma processing is performed on the substrate and a synthetic space in which electromagnetic waves are synthesized;
a dielectric window configured to partition the processing space and the synthetic space;
an antenna unit including a plurality of antennas configured to radiate the electromagnetic waves to the synthetic space; and
an electromagnetic wave output part configured to output the electromagnetic waves to the antenna unit,
wherein the plurality of antennas are helical antennas, the plasma processing method comprising:
disposing the substrate in the processing space;
controlling a phase of each of the electromagnetic waves radiated from the plurality of antennas so that the antenna unit functions as a phased array antenna;
radiating the electromagnetic waves, the phase of each of which is controlled, from the plurality of antennas to the synthetic space, and focusing the electromagnetic waves at an arbitrary position on a surface of the dielectric window to form a focusing portion; and
subsequently, generating plasma in the processing space by the electromagnetic waves that transmit through the dielectric window, and processing the substrate with the plasma, and

wherein each of the helical antennas has a pitch in a range of λ/2 to λ/8 and a number of turns of 1 to 3, where λ is a wavelength of the electromagnetic waves.