Applied Materials, Inc.

Daehee Weon

Sang Wook Kim

Sreekar Bhaviripudi

Sang-jun Choi

Kyeong Tae Lee

Jahyong Kuh

Meihua Shen

Anisul Haque Khan

Shashank C Deshmukh

Sunil Srinivasan

Nicolas Gani

Radhika C Mani

Hiroki Sasano

A layer stack over a substrate is etched using a photoresist pattern deposited on the layer stack as a first mask. The photoresist pattern is in-situ cured using plasma. At least a portion of the photoresist pattern can be modified by curing. In one embodiment, silicon by-products are formed on the photoresist pattern from the plasma. In another embodiment, a carbon from the plasma is embedded into the photoresist pattern. In yet another embodiment, the plasma produces an ultraviolet light to cure the photoresist pattern. The cured photoresist pattern is slimmed. The layer stack is etched using the slimmed photoresist pattern as a second mask.

High lateral to vertical ratio etch process for device manufacturing

Methods for fabricating one or more shallow trench isolation (STI) structures are provided herein. In some embodiments, a method for fabricating one or more shallow trench isolation (STI) structures may include providing a substrate having a patterned mask layer disposed thereon to define one or more STI structures. The substrate may be etched using a plasma formed from a process gas mixture to form one or more STI structures on the substrate, wherein the process gas mixture comprises a fluorine-containing gas and either a fluorocarbon-containing gas or a hydrofluorocarbon-containing gas.

Shallow trench isolation etch process

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Cupertino, CA, United States of America

Daehee Weon