R. Raju

In situ plasma diagnostics study of a commercial high-power hollow cathode magnetron deposition tool

Using a newly designed and built plasma diagnostic system, the plasma parameters were investigated on a commercial 200mm high-power hollow cathode magnetron (HCM) physical vapor deposition tool using Ta target under argon plasma. A three dimensional (3D) scanning radio frequency (rf)-compensated Langmuir probe was constructed to measure the spatial distribution of the electron temperature (Te) and electron density (ne) in the substrate region of the HCM tool at various input powers (2–15kW) and pressures (10–70mTorr). The Te was in the range of 1–3eV, scaling with decreasing power and decreasing pressure. Meanwhile, ne was in the range of 4×1010–1×1012cm−3 scaling with increasing power and decreasing pressure. As metal deposits on the probe during the probe measurements, a self-cleaning plasma cup was designed and installed in the chamber to clean the tungsten probe tip. However, its effectiveness in recovering the measured plasma parameters was hindered by the metal layer deposited on the insulating probe tube which was accounted for the variation in the plasma measurements. Using a quartz crystal microbalance combined with electrostatic filters, the ionization fraction of the metal flux was measured at various input power of 2–16kW and pressure of 5–40mTorr. The metal ionization fraction reduced significantly with the increasing input power and decreasing gas pressure which were attributed to the corresponding variation in the ionization cross section and the residence time of the sputtered atoms in the plasma, respectively. Both the metal neutral and ion flux increased at higher power and lower pressure. The 3D measurements further showed that the ionization fraction decreased when moving up from the substrate to the cathode.Using a newly designed and built plasma diagnostic system, the plasma parameters were investigated on a commercial 200mm high-power hollow cathode magnetron (HCM) physical vapor deposition tool using Ta target under argon plasma. A three dimensional (3D) scanning radio frequency (rf)-compensated Langmuir probe was constructed to measure the spatial distribution of the electron temperature (Te) and electron density (ne) in the substrate region of the HCM tool at various input powers (2–15kW) and pressures (10–70mTorr). The Te was in the range of 1–3eV, scaling with decreasing power and decreasing pressure. Meanwhile, ne was in the range of 4×1010–1×1012cm−3 scaling with increasing power and decreasing pressure. As metal deposits on the probe during the probe measurements, a self-cleaning plasma cup was designed and installed in the chamber to clean the tungsten probe tip. However, its effectiveness in recovering the measured plasma parameters was hindered by the metal layer deposited on the insulating prob...

Reducing LER using a grazing incidence ion beam

As semiconductor feature sizes and pitches shrink to ever-decreasing dimensions, Line Edge Roughness (LER) becomes and increasing important problem. The LER is transferred from the photoresist to the substrate through the subsequent processing steps, causing variations in, eg, gate length. This leads to mismatch in device performance and leakage. Thus, an efficient and cost effective way to reduce the LER in the semiconductor photoresist is needed in order to keep the imperfections from affecting processing steps further down the line. At the CPMI a new technique to reduce LER from patterened photoresist has been developed in conjunction with INTEL. Results obtained using our technique showed significant LER reduction from 6.9±0.47 nm to 3.9±0.61 nm for 45 nm lines and spaces. Recent results on 40 nm lines and spaces showed significant LER reduction from 5.9±0.50 nm to 4.1±0.63nm. LER reduction results on 40 nm lines and spaces reveal the fact that our technique is superior to other available techniques such as etching, vapor smoothing, hardbake, ozonation and rinse.

Removal of particles from lithographic masks through plasma-assisted cleaning by metastable atomic neutralization

For extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) to become a high volume manufacturing technology for integrated circuit manufacturing, the cleanliness of the system, especially the photomask, is of high importance. For EUV photomasks, which cannot be protected from contamination by the use of a pellicle, an effective and quick cleaning technology needs to be ready in order to maintain wafer throughput. There are challenges to extend current wet cleaning technologies to meet the future needs for damage-free and high efficiency mask cleaning. Accordingly, a unique process for cleaning particulates from surfaces, specifically photomasks as well as wafers, has been evaluated at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The removal technique utilizes a high density plasma source as well as pulsed substrate biases to provide for removal. Helium is used as the primary gas in the plasma, which under ionization, provides for a large density of helium metastable atoms present in the plasma. These metastable helium atoms have on the order of 20 eV of energy which can transfer to particles on the substrate to be cleaned. When the substrate is under a small flux of ion bombardment, these bonds then remain broken and it is theorized that this allows the particles to be volatilized for their subsequent removal. 100 % particle removal efficiency has been obtained for 30 nm, 80 nm, and 200 nm polystyrene latex particles. In addition, removal rate has been correlated with helium metastable population density determined by optical emission spectroscopy.

Plasma cleaning of nanoparticles from EUV mask materials by electrostatics

Particle contamination on surfaces used in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) mask blank deposition, mask fabrication, and patterned mask handling must be avoided since the contamination can create significant distortions and loss of reflectivity. Particles on the order of 10nm are problematic during MLM mirror fabrication, since the introduced defects disrupt the local Bragg planes. The most serious problem is the accumulation of particles on surfaces of patterned blanks during EUV light exposure, since > 25nm particles will be printed without an out-of-focus pellicle. Particle contaminants are also a problem with direct imprint processes since defects are printed every time. Plasma Assisted Cleaning by Electrostatics (PACE) works by utilizing a helicon plasma as well as a pulsed DC substrate bias to charge particle and repel them electrostatically from the surface. Removal of this nature is a dry cleaning method and removes contamination perpendicular from the surface instead of rolling or sweeping the particles off the surface, a benefit when cleaning patterned surfaces where contamination can be rolled or trapped between features. Also, an entire mask can be cleaned at once since the plasma can cover the entire surface, thus there is no need to focus in on an area to clean. Sophisticated particle contamination detection system utilizing high power laser called DEFCON is developed to analyze the particle removal after PACE cleaning process. PACE has shown greater than 90 % particle removal efficiencies for 30 to 220 nm PSL particles on ruthenium capped quartz. Removal results for silicon surfaces and quartz surfaces show similar removal efficiencies. Results of cleaning 80 nm PSL spheres from silicon substrates will be shown.

Grazing incidence broad ion beams for reducing line-edge roughness

As semiconductor feature sizes continue to decrease, the phenomena of line-edge roughness (LER) becomes more disruptive in chip manufacturing. While many efforts are underway to decrease LER from the photoresist, post-developed smoothing techniques may be required to continue shrinking chip features economically. This paper reports on one such method employing the use of a broad ion beam at grazing incidence along the features. This method smooths relatively long spatial-length LER, a potential advantage over other smoothing techniques that focus on just molecular-scale LER. LER reduction numbers using Ne and Ar beams are reported at both short and long spatial wavelengths. Variables include beam energy, length of time and angular dependence. LER measurements are taken using the Hitachi image-analysis software on top–down analytical scanning electron microscope (SEM) measurements. Line-profile data are taken from cross-sectional SEM photographs. Tests have achieved a reduction in LER from 9.8 ± 0.67 nm to 5.5 ± 0.86 nm for 45 nm critical dimensions using an Ar beam at 500 eV for 6 s at an 85° angle of incidence. A reduction from 10.1 ± 1.07 nm to 6 ± 1.02 nm was shown using an Ar beam at 1000 eV for 4 s at a 60° angle of incidence.

Ionic debris measurement of three extreme ultraviolet sources

Generation of debris in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) light sources is an inherent and real threat to the lifetime of collection optics. Debris measurement of these sources is useful to enable source suppliers to estimate collector lifetime. At the Center for Plasma Material Interactions (CPMI) at the University of Illinois, an Illinois calibrated spherical sector electrostatic energy analyzer (ICE) was built to measure the ion debris flux in absolute units. In addition to ion flux, the detector is also capable of identifying different ion species present in the plasma utilizing energy-to-charge ratio discrimination. The lifetime of the collector optics is calculated using the measured ion flux. In the current investigation we compare the measurement of ion debris production in three different EUV sources: the Energetiq EQ-10M, the AIXUV-100, and the XTREME XTS 13-35. In the EQ-10M source, three angular measurements are coupled with three variations in operating pressure to measure consequent effects on debri...

Remote plasma cleaning of Sn from an EUV collector mirror

Despite a higher conversion efficiency of Sn for extreme ultra violet (EUV) light generation at 13.5 nm, Sn contamination on collector optics in EUV source systems must be overcome before adopting Sn as EUV fuel. Considerable portion of debris from Sn source can be suppressed by various debris mitigation techniques. However, debris mitigation technique alone will not be sufficient for high volume manufacturing (HVM) scale light production. Sn contamination affects not only the light output but also cost of ownership because of costly and time-consuming cleaning or replacing. In order to solve this contamination issue, Center for Plasma Material Interactions (CPMI) at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign(UIUC) had been working on cleaning Sn from EUV collector mirror surface using inductively coupled plasma-reactive ion etching (ICP-RIE) method. Previously, our group showed the fast cleaning rate of >100±10 nm/min and the dependence of cleaning on plasma-source location. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) surface roughness scan after cleaning showed almost 95% recovery in root-mean-square roughness compared to before-cleaning. Sn debris contamination can also be cleaned by halogen gas at high pressure (several hundreds mTorr). However, cleaning rate is much slower so that longer cleaning time is needed and other components in the system can be harmed by high pressure of corrosive gas. In this study, a remote plasma cleaning method is newly investigated. We designed and fabricated a remote plasma cleaning system which operates with 13.56MHz RF. A residual gas analyzer is used to quantify the chlorine radicals generated in a remote plasma system. A comparative study on the chlorine radicals generated in ICP and remote plasma is carried out. The initial result with gas temperature control shows that more chlorine radicals generate by remote plasma than ICP. It is also reported that high power can produce more chlorine radicals as expected.

Grazing Incidence Ion Beams for Reducing LER

As semiconductor feature sizes continue to decrease, the phenomena of line edge roughness (LER) becomes more disruptive in chip manufacturing. While many efforts are underway to decrease LER from the photoresist, postdevelop smoothing techniques may be required to continue shrinking chip features economically. This paper reports on one such method employing the use of an ion beam at grazing incidence along the features. This method smooths relatively long spatial length LER, a potential advantage over other smoothing techniques that focus on just small-scale LER. LER reduction numbers using Ne and Ar beams are reported at both short and long spatial wavelength. Variables include beam energy, length of time and angular dependence. LER measurements are taken using Hitachi image analysis software on top-down analytical SEM measurements. Line profile data are taken from cross sectional SEM photographs. Tests have achieved a reduction in LER from 9.8±0.67 nm to 5.5±0.86 nm for 45 nm 1:1 lines using an Ar beam at 500 eV for 6 s at an 85o angle of incidence. A reduction from 10.1±1.07 nm to 6±1.02 nm was shown using an Ar beam at 1000 eV for 4 s at a 60o angle of incidence.

Plasma Sn cleaning integrated in EUV source system

Extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) is a potential candidate for the next generation lithography techniques, which will use Xe or Sn as a main fuel to produce EUV light. However, the industry has favored to use Sn as main fuel in EUVL systems because of its high conversion efficiency over Xe. Sn has an advantage of producing more light, but on the other hand its condensable nature is a real threat to the reflective mirrors which are used to collect the EUV light at intermediate focus. Center for Plasma Material Interactions (CPMI) at the University of Illinois has studied plasma etching as a potential method of Sn removal from collector optics. RF-driven chlorine plasma is used to etch Sn from mirror samples. Previously we reported high selectivity of Sn over several EUV compatible mirror materials. The increased confidence in this technology had led us to perform cleaning experiments on real Sn contaminated samples exposed in an EUV source and the results obtained have been very encouraging. Small mock up shells (same as in the grazing incidence collector optics system) were constructed at CPMI and chlorine etching was performed at different samples placed at different locations on multi-shell collector mock up in ICP-RIE chamber. Post cleaning material characterization results of samples shows that chlorine can potentially clean Sn off of collector optics (Ru was used in this study as a mirror sample). Realizing this as a viable cleaning solution, we have stepped further and performed a full size cleaning test in the Xtremes XTS 13-35 EUV source. Large mock up with appropriate dimension was placed in the EUV source chamber and the cleaning system was installed to etch Sn away from Ru surface. This study compares the cleaning results in a real system scale with the previous simulated system. The comparison shows how to improve the Sn cleaning system in the EUV source chamber. Results are encouraging and may enable source suppliers to integrate this technology in their respective sources. Cleaning rate was measured as >100nm/min using ion sputtered Sn samples.

Removal of contaminants by plasma assisted cleaning by metastable atom neutralization (PACMAN)

For the continued advancement of lithography, specifically extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL), particle contamination on the photomask and the subsequent removal of these particles is of critical importance. Particle contamination on the photomasks can result in defects printed on devices and their subsequent failure and/or process throughput reduction. A new idea for the removal of these particles is to utilize the energy in metastable species in a plasma. In a laboratory or processing plasma where ionization fraction is relatively low, there exists metastable species with long lifetimes that have significant energy, in some cases on the order of ~20 eV. Through a combined process of ion bombardment as well as the energy transferred from the neutralization of the metastable species, particles on a surface can be reduced to volatile compounds which can be pumped off of the surface thus reducing the particle contamination on the surface. Preliminary results for the removal of polystyrene latex (PSL) nano particles on low resistivity silicon wafers have shown approximately 20 nm/min removal rates. The removal rate obtained through the use of the PACMAN technique is much faster compared to just metastable cleaning alone. The current results of the removal of particles via the PACMAN technique will be presented as well as a damage assessment if any caused by this process.