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Krishna Saraswat
araswat
tanford University
Outline
• Cleanliness
– Why?
– How?
• Cleaning
– Cleans
– General cleanliness
• Lab Policy
– Personal
– Equipment and Wafers
araswat
tanford University
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Why should you care?
araswat
tanford University
Device Issues
• Performance Degradation
– gate oxide quality 1.E-04
– carrier lifetime 1.E-05
– threshold shifts 1.E-06
– Low ION, high IOFF 1.E-07
I dId
1.E-08
Gate Poly 1.E-09 High trap density
Gate Oxide 1.E-10 Low trap density
1.E-11
-1 1 3 5
Contaminants act as Contaminants act as Vgs
traps or charges in oxide traps, degrading lifetime
and mobility in channel
Substrate
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tanford University
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Device Issues
• Reliability Degradation
– Oxide breakdown Increased
Contamination
Gate Poly
Gate Oxide
Contaminants act as "weak spots"
in the oxide during stressing
Substrate
araswat [Link]
tanford University
Circuit Issues
• Yield Degradation
– single defect can ruin
entire circuit Killer defect in circuit
• Performance Degradation
– must design for worst case
in performance space
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tanford University
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MEMS Issues
• Release problems
Contaminant prevents proper
release of overhang
Overhang
Un-etched SacOx
Substrate
araswat
tanford University
Prevention: Personal Cleanliness
• Pre-suiting procedures
– Wash your face and hands before you enter the
lab. Use lots of water.
– If you eat anything prior to entering the lab, drink
water and rinse your mouth out.
– Do not smoke just before entering the lab. Drink
water if you have smoked recently.
– Avoid muddy shoes
– Wear gloves before suiting up
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tanford University
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Prevention: Personal Habits & Hygiene
Gowning
• Follow gowning procedures
• Change your bunnysuit routinely
Bringing in materials
• Check new materials w/SpecMat
• Make sure things you use are cleanroom-compatible
Lab behavior
• Use appropriate handling tools (not fingers)
• Keep movements deliberate
Hygiene
• Cough and sneeze away from processing areas
• Avoid touching face and unprotected skin
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tanford University
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Prevention: Wafer Handling
Poor handling practices are the primary cause of wafer defects!
Tweezers
• Use appropriate tweezers
Transferring wafers
• Practice roll transfers (cassette to cassette)
• Practice good wafer transfer methods (back to front unload, front to
back load)
Transporting wafers
• Use appropriate cassettes for the process/station you plan to use
• Use wafer boxes when transporting from station to station
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tanford University
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Cleaning - Surface Issues
Contaminant Sources Effects
• Organics • Room air, storage boxes • Oxidation rates, Interface
– Skin oils residue from resist properties
– Resist
– Polymers
• Metals • New wafers, chemicals, • Breakdown field, leakage,
– Alkali ions plasma etching, other oxidation rates, interface
– Heavy and equipment properties, carrier lifetime
transition metals
• Room air, DI dryer, • Interface oxide under high-K
• Native oxide
chemicals
• Micro-roughness • Chemicals, etching • Breakdown field, leakage,
mobility
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tanford University
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Origins of Metal Contamination
1.8
• Sources: equipment, processes, materials, and human
• Transition metals precipitation on Si surface is critical
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tanford University
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Needs from Wet Clean
• Remove
– Organics
– Particles
– Metals/ Ions
– Native Oxide
• Passivate surface
• Dry surface
• Without roughening or contaminating surface
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tanford University
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Si Process Cleans
Post-lithography rinse
Resist strip
• “Clean” substrates
- Following simple etch
- For hardened resist
- For sidewall removal
• Metal-bearing substrates
- Following simple etch
- For hardened resist
Standard Pre-diffusion furnace clean
• Clean substrates
Standard Pre-deposition clean
• Clean substrates
• Metal-bearing substrates
Decontamination cleans
• Clean substrates
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tanford University
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Post-lithography Rinse
Wafers undergoing dry etch following photolithography,
may need to be rinsed prior to processing. The rinse will
remove residual chemicals which may remain after develop.
Residual developer can corrode substrate films and surfaces
coming into contact with wafers.
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tanford University
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Sulfuric/Peroxide Clean: “Piranha”
• “Piranha” is a heated, boiling mixture of concentrated sulfuric acid
(H2SO4) and ~ 30% hydrogen peroxide (H2O2).
• This is a strongly oxidizing acid mixture that is used for removal
of organics. It is also used for removing gross particle
contaminants (e.g., scribe dust) and is used in as part of the pre-
furnace/pre-deposition clean.
– H2SO4 - reduces organics to carbon
– H2O2 - oxidizes carbon to form CO2
• This clean will consume some metals to form sulfates, and is thus
not metal-compatible
• Peroxide evaporates rapidly and is consumed in the reaction, so
needs to be replenished frequently.
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tanford University
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Metallic / Alkali clean
H2O:H2O2:HCl [Link] -- Typically at 70ºC
• This clean removes metallic contaminants and
alkali ions
H2O2 - Oxidizes surface (metal and hydrocarbons)
HCl - reacts with most metals to form soluble
chlorides
Removes metals and ionics from surface
Leaves chemical oxide on Si surface
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tanford University
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Oxide Clean/Etch
HF (Hydrofluoric Acid)
• This clean removes oxides from the wafer
surface. It may sometimes be buffered in
NH4F, and is then called BOE.
• Note that this clean attacks several metals and
is metal-incompatible
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tanford University
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Passivation:
HF Terminated Surface
H H H H
| | | |
NH4F (40%)
or HF (2%)
• HF, NH4F or HI will passivate Si surface with a
H termination
• Passivation reduces organic pickup from air
• Passivation can last for hours
• Degraded by UV or ozone in air
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tanford University
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Resist Strip: Nonmetal-bearing Wafers
Resist hardening: Resist can get heavily cross-linked, e.g., due to
heavy ion implantation and in some plasma etchers
For non-hardened photoresist, 20 minutes of immersion in 10:1 ratio
of conc. sulfuric:30% hydrogen peroxide is used.
For most hardened photoresists, plasma O2 clean may be required
prior to standard or abbreviated (10 min) 10:1 piranha resist strip.
Following certain plasma etch processes in which sidewalls may
form as a side reaction, additional sidewall stripping may be required,
in addition to plasma O2 and standard 10:1 piranha resist strip.
Always inspect your wafers after a resist strip to ensure
cleanliness
araswat
tanford University
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Resist Strip for Metal-bearing Wafers
Piranha cannot be used because it corrodes most metals.
PRX-127 is a commercial chemical product used for stripping
resist. It is partly a solvent and partly a base; introduction of
water will cause metal corrosion.
For non-hardened photoresist (i.e., wafers undergoing
standard wet etch), 20 minutes of immersion in heated
PRX-127.
For most hardened photoresists, plasma O2 clean may be
required prior to resist strip in PRX-127.
Always inspect your wafers after a resist strip to ensure
cleanliness
araswat
tanford University
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Post Plasma Etch Side Wall Cleaning
• Poly-Si/Si etch (HBr/Cl2)
– 50:1 HF 10 sec before resist strip
• Oxide etch
– Polymer cleanup process
• STS Si etch
– Oxygen plasma
• Al etch
– Passivation/strip in AMT P5000/chamber D or PRX127 clean
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tanford University
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Standard Pre-diffusion Furnace Clean
For Clean Wafers only
A. 4:1 Conc. H2SO4: 30% H2O2
B. 50:1 HF dip
C. [Link] Water: 30% H2O2: conc. HCl
D. 50:1 HF dip (before gate oxide growth)
Mixture A: Removes residual organics.
Mixture B: Removes oxide formed by exposure to Mixture A, which is
chemically oxidizing
Mixture C: Removes trace metals
• Rinses are done between each step.
• This is comparable in function to the industry-standard RCA clean and is
performed for clean wafers prior to diffusion furnace processing (anneals
and oxidations, not deposition.)
• Mixtures A and C need to be frequently replenished or changed.
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tanford University
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Standard Pre-deposition Clean
For Clean wafers only
A. 4:1 Conc. H2SO4: 30% H2O2
C. [Link] Water: 30% H2O2: conc. HCl
B. 50:1 HF dip
• Rinses are done between each step.
• Same function as the pre-Diffusion furnace clean, but with
the HF dip done last to minimize native oxide formation
between substrate and deposited film. (Some lab
members prefer to do the standard pre-diffusion furnace
clean process followed by an additional HF dip at the end.)
• This process is performed for clean substrates prior to
LPCVD or metal film deposition.
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tanford University
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Standard Pre-deposition Clean
For wafers with Standard Metals
Wafers are dipped in heated PRS-1000 for 20 minutes,
followed by double-rinse cycle, then spin-rinse-dried.
PRS-1000 is a largely solvent-based, commercial stripper,
similar to PRX-127.
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tanford University
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Decontamination
Decontamination can be done for some substrates which have
been exposed to alkali or other metal contaminants. Wafers
must not contain any contaminating films. This is most
commonly done following KOH etching of silicon. Following
decontamination, wafers are considered to be “clean”.
Decontamination consists of
A. Immersion in [Link] H2O:H2O2:HCl for 20 minutes (done at
wbsilicide – sink must be decontaminated afterwards.)
B. Process through standard piranha resist strip at
wbnonmetal
C. Process through standard pre-diffusion or pre-dep clean at
wbdiff
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tanford University
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Cleaning Vessels and Carriers
• Cleaning Vessel for SC1/SPM/SC2
– Always use Quartz or Teflon containers
– Never use Pyrex – 10% Na and large % B
• HF Vessel
– Teflon preferred. Natural plastics without coloring and HF
compatible are OK. HF can not go down drain
• Wafer/sample carriers
– Teflon or quartz holders only
– Wafers much easier to clean than pieces
– Cassettes – more repeatable results
• Compatible with spin rinser dryers
• Require large vessels
– Non-cassettes – Cheaper and small bath sizes
• Usually requires blow of each wafer/piece
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tanford University
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Rinsing
• Rinsing -- Always done in quartz or “clean” plastic
• Must be long enough to remove all trace of previous chemical
• Use pH meter or resistivity meter to test rinse
• Beakers
• Need to manual dump several times for each rinse step
• Results vary a lot with user
• Uses simple sink – Lowest cost
• Up-flow and Cascade Rinse Tanks
• Big improvement over beakers
• Dump Rinser
• Faster and more effective
• Much higher cost
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tanford University
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Drying
• Blow drying
• Simplest setup and lowest cost
• Needs point of use filter on nitrogen gun
• Need clean surface under sample
• Clean wipes or filter paper
• Particles and water marks common problem
• Isopropyl drying
• Beaker on hot plate with isopropyl at bottom
• Wafers dry as slowly pulled out of breaker
• Spin Rinser Dryers
• Requires full wafers and cassettes
• Simplest to use but most expense
araswat
tanford University
Storage: 30
Cassettes, Storage Boxes, Ozone
• Be careful about storing cleaned wafers
• Cassettes adsorb chemicals and release them later
• Plastic boxes can outgas -> organic deposition
• Lab air is filled with organics -> organic deposition
• Labs have lots of ozone
Ozone removes H passivation
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tanford University
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Prevention: Equipment Groups
for Contamination Control
The three classes of equipment at SNF are:
• Clean: Most stringent level of chemical cleanliness,
compatible with front-end CMOS processing.
• Semi-clean: Next level of chemical cleanliness,
compatible with backend electronics process.
Substrates with standard metals (Al, W, Ti) and their
silicides are acceptable.
• Gold-Contaminated: Non-standard materials may be
processed (however, any new material must receive
prior approval before processing.)
Substrates may be processed in sequence through equipment
belonging to the groups "Clean" -> "Semi-Clean" -> "Gold-
Contaminated“, but generally not the reverse (exceptions listed
on the next slide.)
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tanford University
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Prevention: Equipment Groups
For Contamination Control
• Wafers run in semiclean equipment are thereafter
considered semiclean, even if there are no metal films
present on the wafer. Likewise, wafers run in gold-
contaminated equipment are then considered gold-
contaminated.
• Some equipment (generally, some analytical and most
litho tools) belong to all three categories. This is
because there are built-in safeguard cleans in place to
prevent cross-contamination at critical steps.
• Substrates run through some contaminating processes
can be decontaminated (for ex., KOH etching.)
• SpecMat approves new materials and processes.
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tanford University
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Lab policy - Cleanliness Levels
Must be exposed
Start <1 hour
Diffusion
Clean?
No mainline
Non-standard equipment
Yes
materials / gold? (except some No
To remove organic photo, etc)
contamination, use No Any mainline Yes
the appropriate equipment
Dirty except post-diff
clean Resist, other
Yes equipment
organics?
only
Metal status is No
Any mainline
accumulated - once equipment
Metal
contaminated,
Standard Metals? Yes equipment
always only
contaminated
No
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tanford University
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Lab Policy - Wet Cleans
• Cleans must be done less that 1 hour before
equipment loading and wafers must be stored
in clean Teflon cassettes
• Wafers can move between equipment of
equal cleanliness provided
– interval is less than 1 hour
– wafers are in a clean Teflon cassette (not plastic)
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tanford University
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Lab policy - equipment and wafers
• No wafers of unknown or inappropriate history
• All new materials and chemicals must undergo review by the
SpecMat committee prior to use in the lab. SpecMat attempts to
ensure that potential issues of cross-contamination and safety
are carefully considered before new processes are approved.
SpecMat can be contacted at specmat@[Link]
• “New” includes not only materials that have not been used in the
lab before, but also:
• Standard materials or chemicals from an unproven source
• Standard materials or chemicals used in a novel way
Don’t shortcut policy to get your own work done. If
people break the rules, everyone suffers.
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tanford University
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Take home message
Don’t allow bad habits to propagate. Be conscientious about
your own habits and don’t be shy about correcting other people’s.
We ALL make mistakes. Be professional – take responsibility.
Help by informing staff so we can work to minimize the effect on
other people’s work.
Ask questions if you have any doubts. Everyone wants you to
be successful.
Remember: This is a shared facility. Everything you do affects
not only your work, but that of your fellow labmembers.
araswat
tanford University
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