Plasma is used a lot for microelectronics (and materials science) applications.  About half of the many steps needed for microchip fabrication are based on plasma technology, like surface etching, coating deposition, etc. Furthermore, plasma is also extensively used for surface treatment and deposition of a large variety of coatings, and for the growth of nanomaterials, such as carbon nanotubes and graphene.  In recent years, our research here mainly focuses on the microelectronics applications, for which we use a hybrid Monte Carlo – fluid model to describe the plasma chemistry and plasma-surface interactions in plasma reactors used for etching and film deposition. In addition, we use Monte Carlo feature profile simulations for modelling the formation and shape of etch trenches.


Key publications


Multiscale modeling of plasma–surface interaction - General picture and a case study of Si and SiO2 etching by fluorocarbon-based plasmas.
P. Vanraes, S.P. Venugopalan and A. Bogaerts
Appl. Phys. Rev.8, 041305 (2021) (article selected by the editors as Featured Article, as one of the journal's best articles) Copyright (2021) American Institute of Physics.  This article may be downloaded for personal use only.  Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics.  Following article appeared in Applied Physics Letters and may be found at: https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/5.0058904


Atomic scale simulation of carbon nanotube nucleation from hydrocarbon precursors.
U. Khalilov, A. Bogaerts and E.C. Neyts
Nat. Commun., 6, 10306 (2015)


Fluorine-silicon surface reactions during cryogenic and near room temperature etching.
S. Tinck, E.C. Neyts and A. Bogaerts
J. Phys. Chem. C, 118, 30315-30324 (2014)


Changing chirality during single-walled carbon nanotube growth: a reactive molecular dynamics/Monte Carlo study.
E.C. Neyts, A.C.T. van Duin and A. Bogaerts
J. Amer. Chem. Soc., 133, 17225-17231 (2011)


Simultaneous etching and deposition processes during the etching of silicon with a Cl2/O2/Ar inductively coupled plasma.
S. Tinck, D. Shamiryan and A. Bogaerts
Plasma Process. Polym., 8, 490-499 (2011)  (Selected for the front page of the journal)


Catalyzed growth of carbon nanotube with definable chirality by hydrid molecular dynamics – force biased Monte Carlo simulations.
E.C. Neyts, Y. Shibuta, A.C.T. van Duin and A. Bogaerts
ACSNano, 10, 6665-6672 (2010)