Etching characteristics and the mechanism of HfO2 thin films in Cl-2/Ar inductively-coupled plasma were investigated. The etch rate of HfO2 was measured as a function of the Cl-2/Ar mixing ratio in the range of 0 to 100% Ar at a fixed gas pressure (6 mTorr), input power (700W), and bias power (300W). We found that an increase in the Ar mixing ratio resulted in a monotonic decrease in the HfO2 etch rate in the range of 10.3 to 0.7 nm/min while the etch rate of the photoresist increased from 152.1 to 375.0 nm/min for 0 to 100% Ar. To examine the etching mechanism of HfO2 films, we combined plasma diagnostics using Langmuir probes and quadrupole mass spectrometry with global (zero-dimensional) plasma modeling. We found that the HfO2 etching process was not controlled by ion-surface interaction kinetics and formally corresponds to the reaction rate-limited etch regime. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.