Sabre-xT

The company's copper electrofill tool incorporates process enhancements in the areas of variable electrical waveforms, advanced bath chemistries and automated chemical monitoring and control, using SmartDose. These enhancements address the critical issues needed to enable advanced feature electrofill down to 0.13 micron geometries with aspect ratios as high as 10:1.

The system uses the original Sabre cell design and tool architecture and has the same footprint, while delivering a 50 percent increase in throughput (up to 75 wph), as well as the capability to run both 200 and 300 mm wafers. With the choice of multiple electrical waveforms, DC and reverse pulse plating can be used independently or in combination to tailor the electrofill deposition to a variety of dual damascene structures and barrier/seed layers. Control of the bath chemistry and management of the electrofill chemicals are key to successful volume manufacturing of copper-based ICs. The SmartDose predictive dosing approach mitigates any risk associated with this control. SmartDose automatically adjusts the various chemical components within the bath allowing the bath to be monitored only once per shift. With the Sabre-xT's patented deposition cell design, within wafer uniformity performance of < 2% 1 sigma and wafer-to-wafer uniformity of < 1% 1 sigma has been achieved in the manufacturing environment. The system's unique wafer contact scheme eliminates edge and backside contact with the plating bath during the electroplating process, preventing backside copper contamination.

Novellus Systems, Inc., 4000 N. First St., San Jose, CA 95134. Tel: 408-943-9700. Fax: 408-570-2635.