2024 Published under an exclusive license by the AVS.
Published March 2024
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Journal Article
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In situ plasma pin-up clean process for backside bevel polymer removal, defect reduction, and queue time relaxation
Creators
Abstract
Polymeric residues and films of various thicknesses on the wafer backside and the edge frontside bevel and backside are known to cause substantial yield losses. An additional ex situ bevel etch step can clear away these buildups from the edge bevel area but not from the wafer backside. In this paper, we demonstrate a novel and innovative in situ pin-up plasma clean step that can effectively remove polymers from both the wafer backside and the edge bevel areas, eliminating the need for the bevel etch step. A physical analysis of blanket test wafers and patterned product wafers that have underwent the pin-up clean step in inductively coupled plasma and capacitively coupled plasma etch systems reveals that the pin-up clean step can reduce defect counts on product wafers and improve manufacturing cycle time and throughput by relaxing the queue time constraint.
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Acknowledgement
We would like to thank Shawn Lewis and Jim Gallegos for supporting the development of the pin-up clean process. We would also like to thank all team members in the Surface Analysis Labs at Micron Technology, Inc. in Boise and Virginia for performing SEM, TEM, and XPS analysis.
Contributions
Benjamin B. Ye: Conceptualization (equal); Data curation (equal); Formal analysis (lead); Investigation (lead); Methodology (lead); Software (lead); Validation (lead); Visualization (lead); Writing – original draft (lead); Writing – review & editing (lead). Ganquan Song: Data curation (equal); Formal analysis (equal); Investigation (equal); Methodology (equal). Jeff J. Ye: Conceptualization (lead); Data curation (equal); Formal analysis (equal); Funding acquisition (equal); Investigation (equal); Methodology (equal); Project administration (lead); Supervision (lead); Writing – original draft (equal); Writing – review – editing (equal).
Data Availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. The data are not publicly available due to the proprietary nature of the processes and equipment used to carry out the experiments.
Conflict of Interest
The authors have no conflicts to disclose.
Additional Information
Special Collection: CHIPS: Future of Semiconductor Processing and Devices
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022202_1_6.0003300.pdf
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Additional details
Identifiers
- ISSN
- 2166-2754