Novellus Systems Incorporated

Lam Research Corporation

Jeffrey E Lorelli

Shawn M Hamilton

Harald Te Nijenhuis

Kevin Madrigal

Jonathan David Mohn

Alan M Schoepp

Colin F Smith

Edward Sung

An improved vaporizer for vaporizing a liquid precursor is provided. The vaporizer may include one or more channels with a relatively large wall-area-to-cross-sectional-flow-area ratio and may be equipped with one or more heater elements configured to heat the channels above the vaporization temperature of the precursor. At least some of the channels may be heated above the vaporization temperature but below the Leidenfrost temperature of the precursor. In some implementations, a carrier gas may be introduced at high speed in a direction generally transverse to the precursor flow to mechanically shear the precursor into droplets. Multiple vaporizers may be ganged together in series to achieve complete vaporization, if necessary. The vaporizers may be easily disassembleable for cleaning and maintenance.

Configurable liquid precursor vaporizer

Apparatuses and techniques for providing for variable radial flow conductance within a semiconductor processing showerhead are provided. In some cases, the radial flow conductance may be varied dynamically during use. In some cases, the radial flow conductance may be fixed but may vary as a function of radial distance from the showerhead centerline. Both single plenum and dual plenum showerheads are discussed.

Dual-plenum showerhead with interleaved plenum sub-volumes

Variable showerhead flow by varying internal baffle conductance

Growing community of inventors

Fremont, CA, United States of America

Jeffrey E Lorelli