Reliability assessment of anodic films under plasma etching process

Accelerated Degradation Test (ADT) is a test conducted under extreme stress conditions to accelerate degradation. In the plasma etching process, the life time of the anodic film deteriorates due to fatigue cracking, wear, and erosion arising from ion bombardment and radical reaction. However, ADT has yet to be studied in relation to plasma stress. A fault tree analysis are performed on plasma corrosion. The failure criterion of the corrosion is an increase in number of contamination particles. Since contamination particles are produced by an increase in by-products caused by corrosion, they can also be traced to the reduced mass of the oxide film. CF4, Ar, and O2 gas are used for the plasma corrosion test, and the acceleration factors are set as the pressure of the gases and the input power for plasma. This study proposes an efficient ADT design for the reliability analysis of anodic films under the plasma etching process.