Due to high sensitivity to process parameters, plasma processes should be tightly controlled. For plasma control, a predictive model was constructed using a neural network and optical emission spectroscopy (OES). Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to reduce OES dimensionality. This approach was applied to an oxide plasma etching conducted in. a CHF3/CF4 magnetically enhanced reactive ion plasma. The etch process was systematically characterized by means of a statistical experimental design. Three etch outputs (etch rate; profile angle, and etch rate nonuniformity) were modeled using three different approaches, including conventional, OES, and PCA-OES models. For all etch outputs, OES models demonstrated improved predictions over the conventional or PCA-OES models. Compared to conventional models, OES models yielded an improvement of more than 25% in modeling profile angle and etch rate nonuniformtiy. More than 40% improvement over PCA-OES model was achieved in modeling etch rate and profile angle. These results demonstrate that nonreduced in situ data are more beneficial than reduced one in constructing plasma control model. © 2005 American Vacuum Society.