Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Fabrication Technology
Contamination
control
Dr Khairunisak Abdul Razak
Room 2.16
School of Material and Mineral Resources Engineering
Universiti Sains Malaysia
khairunisak@eng.usm.my
Topic outcomes
At the end of this topic, students should be able to:
Relative size of
contamination
2. Metallic ions
• Controlled resistivity is required in
semiconductor wafers; in N, P and N-P
junction
• The presence of a small amount
electrically active contaminants in the
wafer could results in
– Change device electrical characteristics
– Change performance
– Reliability parameters
• The contaminants that cause this problem
is called Mobile Ionic Contaminants (MIC)
– Metal atoms that exist in an ironic form in the
wafer
•MIC is highly mobile: metallic
Trace Metal Parts per
ions can move inside the Billion (ppb) Impurity
device even after passing Sodium 50
electrical testing and shipping Potassium 50
cause device fails
Iron 50
•MIC must be in < 1010
Copper 60
atoms/cm2
•Sodium is the most common Nickel 60
MIC especially in MOS Aluminum 60
devices look for low-
Manganese 60
sodium-grade chemicals
Lead 60
Zinc 60
Chlorides 1000
3. Chemicals
• Unwanted chemical contamination
could occur during process
chemicals and process water
• This may result in:
– Unwanted etching of the surface
– Create compound that cannot be
removed from the device
– Cause non-uniform process
• Chlorine is the major chemical
contaminant
Liquid chemicals in
semiconductor industries
Trace metallic impurities in some
liquid chemicals
4. Bacteria
• Can be defined as organisms that
grow in water systems or on surfaces
that are not cleaned regularly
• On semiconductor device, bacteria
acts as particulate contamination or
may contribute unwanted metallic
ions to the device surface
5. Airborne molecular contaminants
(AMCs)
• AMCs- fugitive molecules that escape from process tools,
chemical delivery systems, or are carried out into a
fabrication area on materials or personnel
• AMCs: gasses, dopants, and process chemicals used in
fabrication area e.g. oxygen, moisture, organics, acids,
bases etc..
• Problems:
– Harmful to process that requires delicate chemical
reactions such as the exposure of photoresist in the
patterning operations
– Shift etch rates
– Unwanted dopants that shift device electrical parameters
– Change the wetting characteristics of etchants leading to
incomplete etching
Relative size of airborne particles and wafer
dimensions
The effects of contamination on
semiconductor devices
1. Device processing yield
- contaminants may change the dimensions device parts
- change cleanliness of the surfaces
- pitted layers
reduce overall yield through various quality checks
2. Device performance
- This may due to the presence of small pieces of
contamination that is not detectable during quality checks
- may also come from unwanted chemicals or AMCs in the
process steps alter device dimensions or material
quality
- high amount of mobile ionic contaminants in the wafer
can change the electrical performance of the device
3. Device reliability
- Failure of device due to the presence of a small amount
of metallic contaminants that get into the wafer during
processing and not detected during device testing. These
contaminants can travel inside the device and end up in
electrically sensitive areas and cause device failure
Contamination sources
1. Air
2. The production facility
3. Cleanroom personnel
4. Process water
5. Process chemicals
6. Process gasses
7. Static charge
1. Air
• Normal air contains contaminants must be
treated before entering a cleanroom
• Major contaminant is airborne particles;
particulates or aerosols
– They float and remain in air for long period of
time
• Air cleanliness levels of cleanroom is determined
by the
– Particulate diameters
– Density in air
• Federal standard 209E: class number of the air in
the area
– Number of particles 0.5m or larger in a cubic foot of air
• In normal city with smoke, smog and fumes can contains up
to 5 million particles per cubic foot: class number 5 million
• Federal 209E:
– Specify cleanliness level down to class
1 levels
18,000,000 0.0277
15,000,000 0.0333
10,000,000 0.0500
1,000,000 0.500
100,000 5.00
10,000 50.00
DRAMs water spec
Contaminant 64Kb 1Mb 16Mb
Resistivity (Mcm) > 17 > 18 > 18.1
TOC (micro-g/L) < 200 < 50 < 10
Bacteria (#/L) < 250 < 50 <1
Particles < 50 < 50 <1
Critical size (micron) 0.2 0.2 0.05
Dissolved oxygen (micron-g/L < 200 < 100 < 20
Sodium (micro-g/L) <1 <1 < 0.01
Chlorine (micro-g/L) <5 <1 < 0.01
Manganese (micro-g/L) N/A <1 < 0.005
5. Process chemicals
• Highest purity of acids, bases and solvents are used for
etching and cleaning wafers and equipment
• Chemical grades:
– Commercial
– Reagent
– Electronic
– Semiconductor
• Main concerns: metallic mobile ionic contaminants (MIC)
must be < 1 ppm
• To date, can obtain chemicals with 1ppb MIC
• Check assay no e.g. assay 99.9% purity
• Other steps:
– Clean inside containers
– Use containers that do not dissolve
– Use particulate free labels
– Place clean bottles in bags before shipping
6. Process gasses
• Semiconductor fabrication uses many gases:
– Air separation gases: O2, N2, H2
– Specialty gases: arsine and carbon
tetrafluoride
• Determination of gas quality
– Percentage of purity
– Water vapour content
– Particulates
– Metallic ions
• Semicnductor fabrication requires extremely high
purity process gasses for oxidation, sputtering,
plasma etch, chemical vapour deposition (CVD),
reactive ion gas, ion implantation and diffusion
• If gas is contaminated, wafer
properties could be altered due to
chemical reaction
• Gas quality is also shown in assay
no; 99.99-99.999999. The highest
quality is called “six 9s pure”
Requirements for Si wafer
cleaning process
1. Effective removal of all types of surface
contaminants
2. Not etching or damaging Si and SiO2
3. Use of contamination-free and volatilisation
chemicals
4. Relatively safe, simple, and economical for
production applications
5. Ecologically acceptable, free of toxic waste
products
6. Implementable by a variety of techniques
Wafer surface cleaning
4 general types of contaminants:
1. Particulates
2. Organic residues
3. Inorganic residues
4. Unwanted oxide layers
• Wafer cleaning process must
– Remove all surface contaminants
– Not etch or damage the wafer surface
– Be safe and economical in a production
setting
– Be ecological acceptable
• 2 primary wafer conditions:
1. Front end of the line (FEOL)
2. Back end of the line (BEOL)
FEOL
• Wafer fabrication steps used to form the
active electrical components on the wafer
surface
– Wafer surface especially gate areas of MOS
transistors, are exposed and vulnerable
• Surface roughness: excessive roughness
results in degradation of device
performance and compromise the
uniformity
• Electrical conditions of bare surface
– Metal contaminants
• Na, Ni, Cu, Zn, Fe etc: cleaning process need to
reduce the concentration to < 2.5 x 109 atoms /cm2
• Al and Ca contaminants: need to reduce to 5 x 109
atoms/cm2 level
Typical FEOL cleaning process steps
1. Particle removal (mechanical
2. General chemical clean (such as
sulphuric acid/H2/O2
3. Oxide removal (typically dilute HF)
4. Organic and metal removal
5. Alkali metal and metal hydroxide
removal
6. Rinse steps
7. Wafer drying
BEOL
• Main concerns: particles, metals,
anions, polysilicon gate integrity,
contact resistance, via holes
cleanliness, organics, numbers of
shorts and opens in the metal system
Particulate removal
• Spray: blow off the water surface
using spray of filtered high pressure
nitrogen from a hand-held gun
located in the cleaning station
– In fabrication area/small particles:
nitrogen guns are fitted with ioniser that
strip static charges from the nitrogen
stream and neutralise the wafer surface
• Wafer scrubbers-combination of
brush and wafer surface.
• High pressure water cleaning
Organic residues
• Organic residues- compounds that
contain carbon such as oils in
fingerprints
• Can be removed in solvent baths
such as acetone, alcohol or TCE
• Solvent cleaning is avoided:
– difficulty of drying the solvent
completely
– Solvents always contain some
impurities that may cause contamination
Inorganic residues
• Organic residues- do not contain
carbon e.g. HCl and HF from steps in
wafer processing
Chemical cleaning solutions
• For both organic and inorganic
contaminants
• General chemical cleaning
1. Sulphuric acid
• Hot sulphuric acid with added oxidant
• Also a general photoresist stripper
• H2SO4 is an effective cleaner in 90-125C remove
most inorganic residues and particulates from the
surface
• Oxidants are added to remove carbon residues
• Chemical reaction converts C to CO2
• Typical oxidants: hydrogen peroxide (H2O2),
ammonium persulfate [(NH4)2S2O8]
• Nitric acid (HNO3), and ozone (O2)
RCA clean
• RCA clean- H2O2 is used with some base
or acid
• Standard clean 1 (SC-1)
– Solution of water, hydrogen peroxide,
ammonium hydroxide = 5:1:1, 7:2:1, heated to
75-85C
– SC-1 removes organic residues and set up a
condition for desorption of trace metals from
the surface
– Oxide films keep forming and dissolving
• SC-2
– Solution of water, hydrogen peroxide and
hydrochloric acid = 6:1:1 to 8:2:1, 75-85C
– Remove alkali ions and hydroxides and
complex residual metals
– Leave a protective oxide layer
• Order of SC-1 and SC-2 can be
reversed
• If oxide-free surface is required, HF
step is used before, in between, or
after the RCA cleans