IBE, also known as ion milling, is a pure physical etching technique developed in the 1970s. Its principle is to use an ion beam generated by inert gases (such as Ar, Xe, etc.) to bombard the surface of a target material at high speed under the action of an accelerating voltage. During the bombardment process, the ion beam continuously transfers energy to the surface atoms of the material. When the accumulated energy of the surface atoms is greater than their own binding energy, they will detach from the solid surface and undergo sputtering, thereby achieving the purpose of etching.
With the widespread application of copper metal in metal wiring and the decreasing process size, traditional reactive etching combined with wet etching can no longer meet the delayer requirements. Ion beam etching can effectively solve this problem.
