2011-31062

Del Rosario, Ma. Arielle

MatE 125 Homework
1. The silicon wafer should have already been p-doped during the czochralsky process.
Assuming that the silicon wafer has already undergone chemical mechanical front
surface polishing then the first step would be to use the Epitaxy set-up to grow a new
Silicon layer from the substrate to increase its surface purity.

Since the process is

essentially homoepitaxy, it is recommended that Vapor Phase Epitaxy be used to grow

the silicon layer. The Epitaxy set-up must contain SiCl 4 and Hydrogen gas which will
react at temperatures above 1000 0C to produce a new layer of silicon with higher
purity on the surface of the substrate.
Then the cleaning of the silicon wafers comes next. Hydrofluoric acid and deionized
water are the only available reagents for cleaning. Deionized water rinse will have to
suffice to remove particles and organic matter, followed by a Hydrofluoric Acid dip to
remove impurities in the oxide layer and then another deionized water rinse. The wafer
will then be blow dried for the next step which is thermal oxidation.
2. In the thermal oxidation process, the gate oxide and field oxides will be formed. The
gate oxide will be formed first. The gate oxide is thinner and has higher purity than the
field oxide therefore dry oxidation will be performed to produce the gate oxide because
even though it is slower than the wet oxidation process, it will produce an oxide layer
that is compact and has very high purity. In this process the substrate surface will be
reacted with O2 gas in a tube furnace to form the SiO 2 layer. The wet oxidation process
will be used to form the field oxide layer over the gate oxide because wet oxidation
produces oxide layers with lower purity and the purity of the field oxide is not as critical
as that of the gate oxide. The silicon will be reacted with water in the tube furnace to
form a thicker oxide layer with lower purity. Another gate oxide layer will be grown over
the field oxide layer. These processes must be performed at temperatures between
700-1300 0C.
3. To remove the outer gate oxide layer and the field oxide layer a positive photoresist will
be used so that when the light passes through the mask the part hit by the light will
dissolve. To remove the excess gate oxide and field oxide layer for the same mask a
Positive PHOTORESIST

negative photoresist will be used so that the photoresist hit by the light will harden. To
Pho

remove the inner gate oxide layer a positive photoresist will be applied again.
4

1
Pho

Photoresist

Negative

4. The dopant used for the source and drain, since they are n-type semiconductors, should
be phosphine gas. Since the n-type regions have a specific depth and width it is most
suitable to use a physical process i.e. the ion implanter for the doping process. The ion
implanter will bombard the wafer with Phosphide ions. The ions will be accelerated to a
certain velocity that will determine the depth of the n-doped region. Electromagnetic
lenses will regulate the beam that exits the acceleration tube into parallel ion beams to
prevent the ion beams from scattering. The beams will now go through a neutral beam
trap to separate the ion beams from the uncharged beams that may act as impurities
and may damage the crystal onceit reaches the surface.
5. For the metallization it will be best to use the chemical vapor deposition set up and
aluminum as the metal coating. The problem is that TiN coating, which prevents metal
ions from diffusing into the substrate, is not available so we cannot use copper and the
PVD technique because copper diffuses more readily than aluminum and PVD technique
increases the chances of diffusion of the source metal. Aluminum does not diffuse at
temperatures well below 300 0C which is compatible with relatively low working
temperature of the CVD set up.
6. The wet etching technique will be employed because it is capable of selective etching
which is good since we only want to etch certain parts of the oxide layer. Also the
materials available allow only for this kind of etching process. It is also cheaper than
dry etching and does not require big equipment. Since we want to remove the oxide
layer not covered in photoresist we will be using the Hydrofluoric acid available to us to
etch.