Berkeley Eecs PHD Thesis
Berkeley Eecs PHD Thesis
Berkeley Eecs PHD Thesis
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Please speak with Leslie Kolodziejski or Janet Fischer before submitting this form. At the end of the
EMCS, the electron temperature, collision frequency and electron-impact rate coefficients are
computed as a function of position from the EEDs. The ions created in the bulk plasma by inductive
coupling are accelerated in the sheath near the wafer by applying an rf bias on the electrode and is
shown in Fig. 1.6. This is the cause of the anisotropic distribution of ions incident upon the wafer. 1.2
Plasma Modeling As plasma processing systems have increased in complexity and cost, it has
become prohibitive to develop new reactors by only physical experimentation. Once the second
reader is assigned, the thesis proposal submission process is complete. The form requires an initial
thesis title, the name and signature of the research supervisor, and the name of one reader for the
thesis committee agreed upon by the student and advisor. In order for it to be an effective proposal,
it should be submitted at least a year before completion of the thesis itself. Several hundred to a few
thousand particles are integrated in time for many rf cycles, typically greater than 100 rf cycles.
Larger open pores also tend to have polymer-SiO2 interfaces exposed to the ion flux at shallower
angles, which is less optimum for activating etch processes. Berkeley College Phd Thesis, Essay
priceDirected at uc berkeley thesis. The timeline should be granular enough to be meaningful
(typically, a few months at a time) but not so granular to be vulnerable to small perturbations. SiFx is
consumed by ion sputtering to release SiFn gas and by F atom etching of SiF3 to release SiF4. Page
66. The resulting values are then used as a lookup table, which yields electron mobility, thermal
conductivity, energy-loss rate due to collisions and electron impact rate coefficients as a function of
electron temperature. Images provided by Christine Liu, GradImages, Frederic Theunissen, and the
Feller lab, respectively. For a 100% interconnected structure increasing the bias to 80 V reduces the
asymptotic residual polymer fraction to 0.2. Even higher substrate biases would be required to
deliver the required energy inside the pore chains for complete cleaning of the residues. He will
begin work in the spring of 2004 at Novellus Systems, Inc., in Portland, Oregon. This trend is
observed for both CHF3 and C4F8 chemistries. The ICP reactor that was used for the etching of the
SS and PS trenches is the same as that used for the stripping applications. Ions and hot neutrals have
the same mechanism. b. In reactions with no chemical change, the gas species are reflected of the
surface. This module was originally a postprocessor to the HPEM. Integration of such new materials
into microelectronic fabrication has increased the importance of understanding and characterizing the
complex surface phenomena during its processing. The reaction mechanisms developed for
fluorocarbon etching of SiO2 based dielectrics and oxygen etching of organic polymer were coupled
and the coupled reaction mechanism was validated by comparison to experiments for both blanket
and profile etching of SS in ICP and Magnetically Enhanced Reactive Ion Etching (MERIE)
reactors. These species are not initially in thermal equilibrium with the buffer gas, which has a
temperature of ?0.3 eV. Under certain process conditions, these energetic particles may not
thermalize prior to reaching the wafer. The reaction mechanism for Cu IMPVD developed by Lu et
al. In the case of fluorocarbon ions the heavier molecules have higher fluxes than the smaller ones,
while the prominent neutrals have a fairly uniform flux distribution along the radius, except for CF2,
which decrease at the edge. The threshold in self-bias for onset of etching increased with the
threshold of ion activated processes and decreasing polymer sputtering probability. These reactions
are not shown in the table. c. Threshold and reference energies are in eVs. Page 75. Oxygen plasma
based cleaning of PS films is known to have a detrimental effect on the dielectric properties of PS.
Starting with an initial estimate of plasma properties, the EMM computes the inductively coupled
electric fields determined by the inductive coils, and the magnetostatic fields induced by permanent
magnets or dc current loops. Conformal coating into pores is sufficient for a good diffusion barrier
for closed pores. Of interest in this work are their structural properties, which are porosity, average
pore radius and pore interconnectivity.33 Measurements of PS characteristics using small angle x-ray
spectroscopy (SAXS) combined with x-ray reflectivity (XRR) and ellipsometric porosimetry (EP)
indicate that the typical porosities used for ILD are 20-80%.34,35 The dielectric constant is generally
reduced in proportion to the mass density, which is inversely proportional to the porosity.
One great way to start brainstorming for your thesis proposal is to answer the Heilmeier questions for
your own work. Note that the cleaning times are short as only 5-10 nm of material need to be
removed from the sidewalls. This specie has reactions similar to the fluorocarbon polymer, except for
the probability and the threshold energy of the physical sputtering reaction. This has reemphasized
the importance of understanding surface reaction mechanisms in plasma processing of
semiconductors. However the profile becomes bowed as the porous network becomes more
interconnected. A Review of Challenges and Opportunities in Healthcare for Machine Learning. The
smaller electric fields in the sheath as a result of the low electron currents lead to lower energy ions
striking the wafer. This need for thicker average films to mask roughness extends to PS. In this
section HPEM and PCMCM results for an example case is presented. Similar to chemically
enhanced sputtering, physical sputtering of the polymer layer increases with ion energy as in Eq.
(3.5). In the case of F atom etching, F radicals terminate the dangling bonds of carbon in the polymer
chains to release volatile etch products such as CF2. Null collision techniques are used at each
spatial location to provide a reactor wide collision frequency i. Since the ion EADs are anisotropic in
nature, they deliver more activation energy onto the bottom of the trench than onto the sidewalls.
Although the filling of the side pores does not significantly change the taper of the final etched via,
it does create a problem in the subsequent removal of the filled polymer. Profiles of SS trenches
coated using Cu IMPVD for the base case for c) atomically smooth ideal trench and d) trench
obtained after etching and stripping. My sincere thanks go to the professors of my final dissertation
committee, Vinay K. We found that the ER of SS increases as a function of self-bias after a
threshold, and saturates at high biases. A plasma is a partially ionized gas in an electrically quasi-
neutral state. Since the behavior of etch rates as a function of bias voltage is a sensitive function of
threshold energy (Eth) for ion-activated reactions at the interface, this value was calibrated across all
three Page 85. Remote oxygen plasmas are often preferred with the goal of minimizing plasma
damage of the substrate.48 The removal of organic polymer using oxygen plasmas has other
widespread applications in semiconductor processing as well. In Chapter 7, conclusions are made
about the overall significance of the work and recommendations for future work are suggested. Page
20. This produces wider profiles as the profiles transition from tapered to vertical to bowed as the
bias is increased. Hence the variation of etch rate as a function of p0 is minimal at large biases. Page
118. The prominent neutrals are C2F3, C2F4, CF2, CF and F. The Cu IMPVD process for barrier
coating is conformal on the SS film. Ion fluxes tend to increase at the edge of the wafer. The
alternative would be to bridge the gap at the pore openings, which would require barrier coating
thickness of at least the pore diameter. An initial Graduate Thesis Proposal Cover Sheet (Master’s
Degree candidates should see process in next paragraph) must be submitted to Academic Programs
by the second week of the term. An example of the calibration process is shown in Fig. 4.5, where
etch rate is shown as a function of self-bias for different values of Eth for C2F6 plasma at 6 mTorr.
Based on these quantities, a rate of generation of species i as a function of position, ( )riG v (cm-3s-
1), is computed. The outputs of the FKM are then fed back to the EMM and EETM modules for
updated computations.
Although the filling of the side pores does not significantly change the taper of the final etched via,
it does create a problem in the subsequent removal of the filled polymer. The overall cleaning
efficiency in this case is 33%. The sputtering damage during the stripping process is also minimal.
The EADs of the total ion flux and CF2 radical flux (representative of the neutrals) for the base case
are shown in Fig. 6.9. The neutrals have lower average energies and broader angular Page 147. Chen,
Camden Bay, Najmo Hassan, Giles Boland, Isaac Kohane, Steven Seltzer, Kathryn Rexrode, Bharti
Khurana. From a near vertical profile for a closed pore network, the profile gradually bows with
increasing interconnectivity. Remote oxygen plasmas are often preferred with the goal of minimizing
plasma damage of the substrate.48 The removal of organic polymer using oxygen plasmas has other
widespread applications in semiconductor processing as well. Standaert et al. have investigated
fluorocarbon etching of fluorinated SiO2, hydrogen silsesquioxane (HSQ) and MSQ low-k films
using an ICP.39 Comparisons were made to the etching of solid SiO2 (SS) in CHF3 and C4F8
chemistries. The process conditions are 600 W ICP power at 13.56 MHz, 20 mTorr, 40 sccm and -125
V self-bias. Page 152. The opening of pores, then filling with polymer and the subsequent etching of
the filled pore occurs sequentially as the profile evolves. Please speak with Leslie Kolodziejski or
Janet Fischer before submitting this form. The first method is to solve the 2-D electron energy
equation. This has reemphasized the importance of understanding surface reaction mechanisms in
plasma processing of semiconductors. The Plasma Chemistry Monte Carlo Module (PCMCM) in the
HPEM generates the Energy and Angular Distributions (EADs) of the different ion and neutral
species on the wafer. In this work the suitability of porous silica (PS) as an ILD was investigated.
Ion sputtering of the sidewall passivation layer increases as a function of Ar additive and etching
proceeds deeper before etch stop. To investigate these issues, the surface reaction mechanism for
etching of fluorocarbon polymer in O2 plasmas, which was described in Section 3.3.2 has been
incorporated into the two-phase MCFPM (described in Chapter. 3) and the results from this
investigation is presented in this chapter. The polymer surface can also be directly sputtered by ions
to release non- oxygen-containing volatile etch products such as CFx with an energy dependence
governed by Eq. (3.5). The threshold energy and probability for this reaction are based on the
reaction mechanism developed for ion sputtering of the fluorocarbon polymer formed during etching
of SS. This result implies that smaller pores enhance the fundamental ER in CHF3 plasmas. For all
the etch recipes, good agreement in terms of dielectric etching, resist erosion and feature width is
obtained. However, at high biases, the majority of the ions possess the activation energy for
sputtering. Page 87. Marzyeh Ghassemi, Tristan Naumann, Peter Schulam, Andrew L. He has also
worked as a teaching assistant and tutor for several engineering courses. The probability that an
adsorbed cell i moves to another Page 60. Ion angular distributions indicate anisotropic fluxes to the
wafer. Page 100. The trajectories of the pseudoparticles are integrated for the time Page 43. The
wafer is on a substrate 7 cm below the quartz window and can be independently biased. Stripping
was less efficient from PS trenches having large average pore radius and high interconnectivity, as
compared to SS. Higher energy ions reduce the polymer build-up due to pore filling by improved
sputtering of the polymer and an increased delivery of activation energy. 4.5 Concluding Remarks
The surface reaction mechanism for etching of porous and solid SiO2 in fluorocarbon gas chemistries
was validated by comparison to experiments. In highly polymerizing environments, a critical
parameter, which determines the kinetics of the etching process is the steady-state polymer layer
thickness (L).