Applied Materials, Inc.

George Birkmaier

Yezdi N Dordi

Robin W Cheung

Avi Tepman

Ashok K Sinha

Ratson Morad

Dan A Marohl

Michael N Sugarman

Donald J Olgado

Joseph Stevens

Ho Seon Shin

Mark Robert Denome

Peter W Hey

Dan Carl

Eugene Ravinovich

Mark Lloyd

Ben Shen

Anna Marie Lloyd, Legal Representative

The present invention provides an electro-chemical deposition system that is designed with a flexible architecture that is expandable to accommodate future designs and gap fill requirements and provides satisfactory throughput to meet the demands of other processing systems. The electro-chemical deposition system generally comprises a mainframe having a mainframe wafer transfer robot, a loading station disposed in connection with the mainframe, one or more processing cells disposed in connection with the mainframe, and an electrolyte supply fluidly connected to the one or more electrical processing cells. Preferably, the electro-chemical deposition system includes a spin-rinse-dry (SRD) station disposed between the loading station and the mainframe, a rapid thermal anneal chamber attached to the loading station, and a system controller for controlling the electro-chemical deposition process and the components of the electro-chemical deposition system.

Electro-chemical deposition system

The present invention generally provides an electro-chemical deposition system that is designed with a flexible architecture that is expandable to accommodate future designs rules and gap fill requirements and provides satisfactory throughput to meet the demands of other processing systems. The electro-chemical deposition system generally comprises a front-end loading station, a mainframe including one or more processing cells, and an electrolyte replenishing system fluidly connected to the one or more electrical processing cells. The electrolyte replenishing system comprises a main electrolyte supply tank and an analyzer module and dosing module coupled thereto. The analyzer module includes one or more chemical analyzers to monitor the concentrations of various chemicals in the main electrolyte supply tank. Information provided by the analyzer module is transmitted via a central control system to the dosing module. Source tanks in the dosing module communicate with the main supply tank to deliver the desired proportions of chemicals thereto. Preferably, the electrolyte analysis is performed continuously during processing to provide real-time data and electrolyte adjustments.

Electro-chemical deposition system and method

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Cupertino, CA, United States of America

George Birkmaier