Basic study on etching selectivity of plasma chemical vaporization machining by introducing crystallographic damage into work surface

Plasma chemical vaporization machining (PCVM) is a high-speed plasma etching method using atmospheric-pressure plasma. Although it does not leave an affected layer on the processed surface because of the small ion energy owing to the small mean free path of gas molecules, it is not suitable for planarization because of its isotropic etching. Thus, a combination of PCVM and a mechanical machining process is proposed. The convex parts of a substrate surface are considered to be affected by mechanical machining and are removed preferentially by PCVM. In this report, it is investigated whether etching rate of the affected layer becomes larger or not. As a result, it was found that the etching rate increased in the first 100 nm depth of the mechanically polished substrate, which corresponds to the thickness of the heavily damaged layer observed by cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy.