Lam Research Corporation

Intel Corporation

Novellus Systems Incorporated

Other

Advanced Technology Materials, Inc.

Adrien Lavoie

Purushottam Kumar

Shankar Swaminathan

Hu Kang

Jun Qian

Frank Loren Pasquale

Ramesh Chandrasekharan

Ishtak Karim

Pulkit Agarwal

Chloe Baldasseroni

Karl Frederick Leeser

Juan E Dominguez

Harsono S Simka

Bart Jan Van Schravendijk

John J Plombon

Joseph Abel

Dennis Michael Hausmann

Edward J Augustyniak

Joseph Han

Jennifer Leigh Petraglia

Douglas L Keil

Yukinori Sakiyama

Yaswanth Rangineni

Ravi Kumar

Bhadri N Varadarajan

Saangrut Sangplung

Richard Alan Gottscho

David Charles Smith

Sesha Varadarajan

Michael Philip Roberts

Ted Minshall

Tuan Anh Nguyen

Valery M Dubin

Jon Henri

Aaron A Budrevich

Andrew Duvall

Richard Phillips

Sung Je Kim

Seiji Matsuyama

Jeffrey S Marks

Artur Kolics

Samantha SiamHwa Tan

George Andrew Antonelli

Sirish K Reddy

Patrick G Breiling

Ananda K Banerji

Thomas Joseph Knisley

Wanki Kim

Mark L Doczy

Reza Arghavani

Girish Anant Dixit

Sunil Kapoor

Paul Konkola

Nader Shamma

David Michael Thompson

Awnish Gupta

Antonio Xavier

John D Peck

Sivananda K Kanakasabapathy

Qinghuang Lin

Richard Stephan Wise

Kevin O'Brien

Bryan Clark Hendrix

Seshasayee Varadarajan

Yang Pan

Jengyi Yu

Romuald Nowak

Mohamed Sabri

Samantha S H Tan

Damien Martin Slevin

Jennifer O'Loughlin

Edmund Minshall

Steven W Johnston

Jerome S Hubacek

Arnel M Fajardo

Douglas Walter Agnew

Chunhai Ji

Timothy William Weidman

Bart K Van Schravendijk

Thomas H Baum

Chongying Xu

Jeffrey F Roeder

Michal Danek

Ming Chu Li

Florian Gstrein

Mandyam Sriram

Tianniu Chen

Easwar Srinivasan

Nagraj Shankar

Thomas W Mountsier

David Walter Peters

Vijayakumar S Ramachandrarao

Mansour Moinpour

Gregory T Stauf

Paul Franzen

Michael G R Smith

Arpan Pravin Mahorowala

Aaron Bingham

Jason Daejin Park

Brian Joseph Williams

Methods and apparatuses for controlling precursor flow in a semiconductor processing tool are disclosed. A method may include flowing gas through a gas line, opening an ampoule valve(s), before a dose step, to start a flow of precursor from the ampoule to a process chamber through the gas line, closing the ampoule valve(s) to stop the precursor from flowing out of the ampoule, opening a process chamber valve, at the beginning of the dose step, to allow the flow of precursor to enter the process chamber, and closing the process chamber valve, at the end of the dose step, to stop the flow of precursor from entering the process chamber. A controller may include at least one memory and at least one processor and the at least one memory may store instructions for controlling the at least one processor to control precursor flow in a semiconductor processing tool.

Dynamic precursor dosing for atomic layer deposition

Methods and apparatuses for depositing thin films using long and short conversion times during alternating cycles of atomic layer deposition (ALD) are provided herein. Embodiments involve alternating conversion duration of an ALD cycle in one or more cycles of a multi-cycle ALD process. Some embodiments involve modulation of dose, purge, pressure, plasma power or plasma energy in two or more ALD cycles.

Modulated atomic layer deposition

Methods and apparatuses for depositing material onto substrates in a multi-station deposition apparatus having a first station and a second station are provided. One method may include providing a first substrate onto a first pedestal of the first station, providing a second substrate onto a second pedestal of the second station, and for a first part of a deposition process, simultaneously generating a first plasma at the first station while the first pedestal is separated by a first distance from a first showerhead of the first station, thereby depositing a first layer of material onto the first substrate, and a second plasma at the second station while the second pedestal is separated by a second distance from a second showerhead of the second station, thereby depositing a second layer of material onto the second substrate, in which the first distance is different than the second distance.

Multi-station semiconductor processing with independently adjustable pedestals

Various embodiments herein relate to methods and apparatus for depositing doped and undoped silicon-containing films having a high degree of purity. In one example, the method includes exposing the substrate to a first reactant and a second reactant; reacting the first and second reactants with one another to form a silicon-containing material and depositing a portion of the silicon-containing film on the substrate; before the silicon-containing film is complete, performing an impurity reduction operation including: (i) generating a plasma from a plasma generation gas comprising inert gas and hydrogen, where the plasma generation gas is substantially free of oxygen, and (ii) exposing the substrate to the plasma to thereby reduce a concentration of fluorine, carbon, hydrogen, and/or nitrogen in the silicon-containing film; and repeating these operations (or a subset thereof) until the silicon-containing film is deposited to a final thickness.

Impurity reduction in silicon-containing films

Methods for depositing films by atomic layer deposition using aminosilanes are provided.

Ultrathin atomic layer deposition film accuracy thickness control

A substrate processing system includes a processing chamber, a substrate support including a plurality of heater zones arranged in the processing chamber, a gas delivery system configured to deliver process gases to the processing chamber, and a controller configured to communicate with the gas delivery system and the plurality of heater zones, initiate a first treatment step of a process during a transient temperature period after a substrate is arranged on the substrate support and prior to the substrate reaching a steady-state temperature of the substrate support, and adjust heating to each of the plurality of heater zones during the first treatment step based on average heat functions determined for corresponding ones of the plurality of heater zones during a period corresponding to the first treatment step.

Rapid tuning of critical dimension non-uniformity by modulating temperature transients of multi-zone substrate supports

Methods for making thin-films on semiconductor substrates, which may be patterned using EUV, include: depositing the organometallic polymer-like material onto the surface of the semiconductor substrate, exposing the surface to EUV to form a pattern, and developing the pattern for later transfer to underlying layers. The depositing operations may be performed by chemical vapor deposition (CVD), atomic layer deposition (ALD), and ALD with a CVD component, such as a discontinuous, ALD-like process in which metal precursors and counter-reactants are separated in either time or space.

Integrated dry processes for patterning radiation photoresist patterning

Provided herein are methods and apparatus for filling one or more gaps on a semiconductor substrate. The disclosed embodiments are especially useful for forming seam-free, void-free fill in both narrow and wide features. The methods may be performed without any intervening etching operations to achieve a single step deposition. In various implementations, a first operation is performed using a novel PEALD fill mechanism to fill narrow gaps and line wide gaps. A second operation may be performed using PECVD methods to continue filling the wide gaps.

Gapfill of variable aspect ratio features with a composite PEALD and PECVD method

A system to process a semiconductor substrate includes a substrate support assembly configured to support the semiconductor substrate. The substrate support assembly includes M resistive heaters respectively arranged in M zones in a layer of the substrate support assembly, where M is an integer greater than 1. The layer is adjacent to the semiconductor substrate. The substrate support assembly includes N temperature sensors arranged at N locations in the layer, where N is an integer greater than 1 and less than or equal to M. The system further includes a controller configured to control one or more of the M resistive heaters based on a temperature sensed by one of the N temperature sensors and average temperatures of one or more of the M zones.

Temperature control of a multi-zone pedestal

A method for evacuating a volume below a substrate in a substrate processing system includes arranging the substrate on a lift mechanism of a substrate support to define the volume below the substrate between the substrate and an upper surface of the substrate support. An evacuation step is initiated to evacuate the volume below the substrate. The evacuation step includes pumping down the volume below the substrate at least one of through and around the lift mechanism. The lift mechanism is lowered during the evacuation step to position the substrate on the upper surface of the substrate support and the evacuation step is terminated.

Use of vacuum during transfer of substrates

Silicon oxide, silicon nitride, and silicon oxynitride films may be deposited by thermal atomic layer deposition (thermal ALD) in a single wafer plasma reactor. The single wafer plasma reactor can perform thermal ALD and plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD). Highly conformal films may be deposited at a high deposition rate without damaging or with minimal damage to the substrate using thermal ALD. The substrate may be heated at an elevated temperature during oxidation and/or nitridation. In some implementations, the elevated temperature is between about 500 C and about 750 C. In some implementations, hydrogen and oxygen may be flowed as reactant gases during oxidation, where the hydrogen and oxygen may react in an exothermic reaction to drive formation of oxide.

Thermal atomic layer deposition of silicon-containing films

Apparatuses and systems for pedestals are provided. An example pedestal may have a body with an upper annular seal surface that is planar, perpendicular to a vertical center axis of the body, and has a radial thickness, a lower recess surface offset from the upper annular seal surface, and a plurality of micro-contact areas (MCAs) protruding from the lower recess surface, each MCA having a top surface offset from the lower recess surface by a second distance less, and one or more electrodes within the body. The upper annular seal surface may be configured to support an outer edge of a semiconductor substrate when the semiconductor substrate is being supported by the pedestal, and the upper annular seal surface and the tops of the MCAs may be configured to support the semiconductor substrate when the semiconductor substrate is being supported by the pedestal.

Electrostatic chuck with seal surface

A method for doping a substrate is provided. A silicon oxide diffusion barrier layer is formed on a surface of the substrate. At least one dopant layer is deposited over the silicon oxide diffusion barrier layer. A cap layer is deposited over the at least one dopant layer forming a stack of the substrate, the silicon oxide diffusion layer, the at least one dopant layer, and the cap layer. The stack is annealed. The cap layer, at least one dopant layer, and the silicon oxide diffusion barrier layer are removed.

Method for providing doped silicon using a diffusion barrier layer

A system to deposit a film on a substrate using atomic layer deposition includes a pedestal arranged in a processing chamber to support the substrate on a top surface of the pedestal when depositing the film on the substrate. A first annular recess in the pedestal extends downwardly from the top surface of the pedestal and radially inwardly from an outer edge of the pedestal towards an outer edge of the substrate. The first annular recess has an inner diameter that is greater than a diameter of the substrate. An annular ring is made of a dielectric material and is arranged around the substrate in the first annular recess. A second annular recess in the pedestal is located under the annular ring. The second annular recess has a height and extends radially inwardly from the outer edge of the pedestal towards the outer edge of the substrate.

Pedestals for modulating film properties in atomic layer deposition (ALD) substrate processing chambers

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Newberg, OR, United States of America

Adrien Lavoie