Physics-Based Multi-Scale Modeling of Angled Reactive Ion Etching

Abstract

We have developed a workflow to model reactive ion etching (RIE) that eliminates the need for experimental calibration by replacing empirical yield functions with data derived from molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. The MD simulations compute the angle- and energy-dependent sputtering yields, which are directly integrated into a feature-scale surface evolution model. Our approach captures the angular dependence of the etch process and qualitatively reproduces experimental profiles for blazed gratings fabricated using sequential ion beam exposures. The flexible and extendable workflow reduces reliance on time-consuming experiments and provides a pathway toward more predictive, physics-based process modeling.