Tokyo Electron Limited

Daisuke Ito

Subhadeep Kal

Aelan Mosden

Yusuke Muraki

Shinji Irie

Matthew Flaugh

Masashi Matsumoto

A method for the dry removal of a material on a microelectronic workpiece is described. The method includes receiving a substrate having a working surface exposing a metal layer and having at least one other material exposed or underneath the metal layer; and differentially etching the metal layer relative to the other material by exposing the substrate to a controlled gas-phase environment containing an anhydrous halogen compound.

Gas phase etch with controllable etch selectivity of metals

Embodiments provide a non-plasma etch, such as a gas-phase and/or remote plasma etch, of titanium-containing material layers with tunable selectivity to other material layers. A substrate is received within a process chamber, and the substrate has exposed material layers including a titanium-containing material layer and at least one additional material layer. The additional material layer is selectively etched with respect to the titanium-containing material layer by exposing the substrate to a controlled environment including a halogen-containing gas. For one embodiment, the halogen-containing gas includes a fluorine-based gas. For one embodiment, the titanium-containing material layer is a titanium or a titanium nitride material layer. For one embodiment, the additional material layer includes tungsten, tungsten oxide, hafnium oxide, silicon oxide, silicon-germanium, silicon, silicon nitride, and/or aluminum oxide. A non-selective etch with respect to the titanium-containing material layer can be performed by modulating the process parameters such as temperature.

Non-plasma etch of titanium-containing material layers with tunable selectivity to alternate metals and dielectrics

A method for the dry removal of a material on a microelectronic workpiece is described. The method includes receiving a substrate having a working surface exposing a silicon-germanium alloy and at least one other material, the silicon-germanium alloy represented as SiGe, wherein x is a real number ranging from 0 to 1; and selectively etching the silicon-germanium alloy relative to the other material by exposing the substrate to a controlled gas-phase environment containing an anhydrous halogen compound, such as a diatomic halogen or an interhalogen compound.

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Hillsboro, OR, United States of America

Daisuke Ito