CVD Process

Featured at Semicon West

Applied Materials, Inc. offers the Nitride550, a single-wafer, silicon nitride CVD process. The Nitride550 process provides IC manufacturers with a simpler, lower temperature solution for etch stop and other gate dielectric films that are currently deposited by batch furnace technologies. The new process has been qualified for advanced logic and memory devices at customer fabs in the U.S., Europe, and Korea.

Nitride films are used increasingly throughout the semiconductor device fabrication process, as well as in the final passivation layer. Thin layers of nitride are especially useful as etch stop materials. The nitride provides a distinct boundary between two otherwise similar gate materials so etching can be stopped at a precise depth. Nitride's barrier properties are also valuable in applications where chipmakers want to avoid diffusion of dopants or metallic elements into adjacent areas of the transistor structure. Transistor-level nitride film layers have traditionally been deposited in batch furnace-type reactors that maintain wafers at high temperatures of more than 800ºC for an hour. By contrast, the Nitride550 deposits the same layer at 550ºC in just one minute, thus reducing production time, virtually eliminating unwanted dopant diffusion, and decreasing unwanted silicidation reactions.

The Nitride550 process uses Applied Materials' DxZ chamber on the company's Centura multi-chamber platform. The Nitride550 process is retrofittable to existing DxZ chambers with the addition of a high-temperature ceramic heater. In addition to the productivity and thermal advantages of the Nitride550 process, single-wafer processing avoids backside deposition on the wafer. This eliminates the need for additional backside film removal steps associated with LPCVD batch reactors and simplifies the production sequence. The absence of backside deposition also minimizes wafer warpage.

Applied Materials, Inc., 3050 Bowers Ave., Santa Clara, California 95054. Tel: 408-727-5555; Fax: 408-986-8352.