(Invited) Particle Cleaning Technologies to Meet Advanced Semiconductor Device Process Requirements

Abstract

Dealing with nanometer-sized particulate contamination is still one of the major challenges during the manufacturing of yielding semiconductor devices. This is especially true for the increasing number of critical processing steps, where residues of particulate matter need to be removed without mechanically damaging sensitive device patterns and, at the same time, achieve the lowest possible substrate loss. If higher substrate loss would be permitted, pure chemical mechanism could be employed (e.g. particle undercut and lift-off). However, being only permitted to have statistical sub-Angstrom material loss, physical forces need to be integrated jointly with the appropriate chemical support. This paper provides an overview of prospective techniques being currently investigated to meet present and future industry requirements.