Oxide etching yield has been measured directly with inductively coupled. fluorocarbon plasmas. The yields measurement technique of this work can provide useful information for feature profile evolution modeling, which is essential to understand various issues. in oxide etching such as reactive ion etching (RIE) lag, inverse RIE lag, etch stop, microtrenching, bowing, etc. Etching and deposition yields per ion were measured using quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) as a function of ion bombardment energy, ion-to-neutral flux ratio, and ion-impinging angle. C2HF5, C2F6, C2H4F2, and C4F8 were used for the oxide etching. Oxide etching mechanism with those gases is complex because etching and deposition are involved at the same time. In highly selective processes fluorocarbon deposition plays important role in determining etching characteristics. Two fluorocarbon deposition mechanisms are identified in this work: neutral deposition and ion-enhanced deposition. The low-energy ions are believed to enhance the deposition rates by creating active sites and fluorocarbon neutrals deposit on the active,sites with higher sticking probability. A surface kinetic model is suggested to explain the ion-enhanced mechanism and shows good agreement with experimental data. Angular yield measurement shows that when fluorocarbon deposition is relatively severe, etching yield decreases significantly as the incident angle increases and deposit fluorocarbon at a high incident angle above 60degrees. (C) 2003 American Vacuum Society.