Applied Materials, Inc.

Other

Harry Q Lee

Jeffrey Drue David

Boguslaw A Swedek

Dominic J Benvegnu

Jun Qian

Kun Xu

Benjamin Cherian

Robert D Tolles

Lakshmanan Karuppiah

Sasson Roger Somekh

Ilya Perlov

Eugene Gantvarg

Norman Shendon

Michael T Sherwood

Jimin Zhang

Norm Shendon

David Maxwell Gage

Wen-Chiang Tu

Sivakumar Dhandapani

Doyle E Bennett

Kiran Lall Shrestha

Ingemar Carlsson

Abraham Ravid

Zhize Zhu

Denis Ivanov

Hassan G Iravani

Zhihong Wang

Yuri S Uritsky

Charles C Garretson

Thomas H Osterheld

Sen-Hou Ko

Patrick D Kinney

Sidney P Huey

Shih-Haur Shen

Jeonghoon Oh

Wei-Yung Hsu

Wei Guang Lu

Haosheng Wu

Allen L D'Ambra

William L Guthrie

Jagan Rangarajan

Semyon Spektor

Garrett Ho Yee Sin

Dror Paley

Tsungnan Cheng

Joshua J Reardon

Kang-Ho Ahn

Gary Ka Ho Lam

Xiaoyuan Hu

Norman W Parker

Ningzhuo Cui

Thian Choi Lim

Patrick A Higashi

Christopher Lai

Eric T Wu

An apparatus for processing a substrate, the apparatus comprising a polishing assembly and a controller. The polishing assembly is configured to (a) polish a surface of the substrate. The controller is configured to (b) detect a first substrate measurement corresponding to a first region of the substrate, (c) detect a second substrate measurement corresponding to a second region of the substrate; (d) determine a difference between the first substrate measurement at the first region and the second substrate measurement at the second region; stop the polishing of the surface of the substrate in response to a determination that the difference between the first substrate measurement and the second substrate measurement is within a tolerance threshold; and repeat (a)-(d) in response to a determination that the difference between the first substrate measurement and the second substrate measurement is outside of the tolerance threshold.

Underlayer topography metal residue detection and overpolishing strategy

A method of compensating for a contribution of conductivity of the semiconductor wafer to a measured trace by an in-situ electromagnetic induction monitoring system includes storing or generating a modified reference trace. The modified reference trace represents measurements of a bare doped reference semiconductor wafer by an in-situ electromagnetic induction monitoring system as modified by a neutral network. The substrate is monitored with an in-situ electromagnetic induction monitoring system to generate a measured trace that depends on a thickness of the conductive layer, and at least a portion of the measured trace is applied to a neural network to generate a modified measured trace. An adjusted trace is generated, including subtracting the modified reference trace from the modified measured trace.

Compensation for substrate doping in edge reconstruction for in-situ electromagnetic inductive monitoring

A method of polishing a layer on the substrate at a polishing station includes the actions of monitoring the layer during polishing at the polishing station with an in-situ monitoring system to generate a plurality of measured signals for a plurality of different locations on the layer; generating, for each location of the plurality of different locations, an estimated measure of thickness of the location, the generating including processing the plurality of measured signals through a neural network; and at least one of detecting a polishing endpoint or modifying a polishing parameter based on each estimated measure of thickness.

Polishing apparatus using neural network for monitoring

A body is brought into contact with a polishing pad of a polishing system, a polishing liquid is supplied to the polishing pad, relative motion between the body and the polishing pad is generated while the body contacts the polishing pad, a signal from an in-situ eddy current monitoring system during the relative motion while the body contacts the polishing pad, generating, and mechanical vibrations in the polishing system are detected based on a signal from the in-situ eddy current monitoring system.

Eddy current monitoring to detect vibration in polishing

Data received from an in-situ monitoring system includes, for each scan of a sensor, a plurality of measured signal values for a plurality of different locations on a layer. A thickness of a polishing pad is determined based on the data from the in-situ monitoring system. For each scan, a portion of the measured signal values are adjusted based on the thickness of the polishing pad. For each scan of the plurality of scans and each location of the plurality of different locations, a value is generated representing a thickness of the layer at the location. This includes processing the adjusted signal values using one or more processors configured by machine learning. A polishing endpoint is detected or a polishing parameter is modified based on the values representing the thicknesses at the plurality of different locations.

Polishing apparatus using machine learning and compensation for pad thickness

A method of polishing a substrate includes polishing a conductive layer on the substrate at a polishing station, monitoring the layer with an in-situ eddy current monitoring system to generate a plurality of measured signals values for a plurality of different locations on the layer, generating thickness measurements the locations, and detecting a polishing endpoint or modifying a polishing parameter based on the thickness measurements. The conductive layer is formed of a first material having a first conductivity. Generating includes calculating initial thickness values based on the plurality of measured signals values and processing the initial thickness values through a neural network that was trained using training data acquired by measuring calibration substrates having a conductive layer formed of a second material having a second conductivity that is lower than the first conductivity to generated adjusted thickness values.

Technique for training neural network for use in in-situ monitoring during polishing and polishing system

Trained neural network in in-situ monitoring during polishing and polishing system

During polishing of a stack of adjacent layers, a plurality of instances of a profile control algorithm are executed on a controller with different instances having different values for a control parameter. A first instance receives a sequence of characterizing values from an in-situ monitoring system during an initial time period to control a polishing parameter, and a second instance receives the sequence of characterizing values during the initial time period and a subsequent time period to control the polishing parameter. Exposure of the underlying layer is detected based on the sequence of characterizing values from the in-situ monitoring system.

Profile control with multiple instances of contol algorithm during polishing

A method of controlling polishing includes polishing a stack of adjacent conductive layers on a substrate, measuring with an in-situ eddy current monitoring system a sequence of characterizing values for the substrate during polishing, calculating a polishing rate from the sequence of characterizing values repeatedly during polishing, calculating one or more adjustments for one or more polishing parameters based on a current polishing rate using a first control algorithm for an initial time period, detecting a change in the polishing rate that indicates exposure of the underlying conductive layer, and calculating one or more adjustments for one or more polishing parameters based on the polishing rate using a different second control algorithm for a subsequent time period after detecting the change in the polishing rate.

Switching control algorithms on detection of exposure of underlying layer during polishing

A method of chemical mechanical polishing includes bringing a substrate having a conductive layer disposed over a semiconductor wafer into contact with a polishing pad, generating relative motion between the substrate and the polishing pad, monitoring the substrate with an in-situ electromagnetic induction monitoring system as the conductive layer is polished to generate a sequence of signal values that depend on a thickness of the conductive layer, determining a sequence of thickness values for the conductive layer based on the sequence of signal values, and at least partially compensating for a contribution of conductivity of the semiconductor wafer to the signal values.

Compensation for substrate doping for in-situ electromagnetic inductive monitoring

Using a trained neural network for use in in-situ monitoring during polishing and polishing system

A method to assist in identifying a spectral feature and a characteristic of the selected spectral feature to monitor during polishing includes polishing a test substrate and measuring a sequence of spectra of light reflected from a substrate while the substrate is being polished, where at least some of the spectra of the sequence differ due to material being removed during the polishing. The sequence of spectra are visually displayed as a contour plot.

Display of spectra contour plots versus time for semiconductor processing system control

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Los Altos, CA, United States of America

Harry Q Lee