As the feature size shrinks toward the nanoscale, charge-up damage from ion-induced etching becomes a very serious problem. Neutral beam etching is one of the most popular techniques used to reduce charge-up damage. We have performed a neutral beam simulation to optimize the neutral beam, which is generated by collisions between ions produced by a plasma source with, an ion gun and low angle reflectors. An ion gun is simulated using the two-dimensional Xgrafic object oriented particle-in-cell (xoopic) code to obtain a higher ion flux and to improve the directionality of ions. For neutral beam simulation, we use the modified XOOPIC code to which reflection data obtained by the transport of ions in matter (TRIM) code are appended. Neutral flux, energy and angle distributions, which have an influence upon the etch rate, are calculated in the neutral beam simulation. A low-energy neutral beam from an ion gun with two grids has a low neutral flux and a broad angle distribution. Therefore, we propose a three-grid ion gun that has one additional grid with positive voltage, allowing independent control of the ion flux and ion energy. By increasing the ion flux, the neutral flux by three grids is three times larger than that by two grids. The neutral beam source using a three-grid ion gun has several advantages for trench etching: increased etch rate, decreased sidewall etching, and reduced variation in the etch rate as the trench size changes. A low-energy neutral beam source using the three-grid ion g 0un and low-angle reflectors is experimentally tested. (C) 2004 American Vacuum Society.