Applied Materials, Inc.

Jitske Trevor

Thorsten B Lill

Jeffrey D Chinn

Michael N Grimbergen

Padmapani Nallan

Walter R Merry

Shashank C Deshmukh

Ajey M Joshi

Jeff Chinn

Cynthia B Brooks

Raney Williams

Wei-Nan Jiang

Herve Mace

Tamas Varga

Gladys D Quinones

A substrate processing apparatus comprises a chamber capable of processing a substrate . A radiation source provides radiation that is at least partially reflected from the substrate in the chamber. A radiation detector is provided to detect the reflected radiation and generate a signal. A controller is adapted to receive the signal and determine a property of the substrate in situ during processing, before an onset of during or after processing of a material on the substrate

Substrate monitoring method and apparatus

A process of reducing critical dimension (CD) microloading in dense and isolated regions of etched features of silicon-containing material on a substrate uses a plasma of an etchant gas and an additive gas. In one version, the etchant gas comprises halogen species absent fluorine, and the additive gas comprises fluorine species and carbon species, or hydrogen species and carbon species.

Sidewall polymer forming gas additives for etching processes

In accordance with the present invention, during a polysilicon etch back, a controlled amount of oxygen (O ) is added to the plasma generation feed gases, to reduce pitting of the etched back polysilicon surface. The plasma etchant is generated from a plasma source gas comprising: (i) at least one fluorine-containing gas, and (ii) oxygen. The invention may be practiced in any of a number of apparatus adapted to expose polysilicon to a plasma etchant. One preferred apparatus is a decoupled plasma source (DPS&trade;, Applied Materials, Santa Clara, Calif.) etching system. Another preferred apparatus is a magnetically enhanced plasma (MXP&trade;, Applied Materials, Santa Clara, Calif.) etching system. Preferably, the invention is practiced in an apparatus having a memory that stores instructions for carrying out the process of the invention, a processor adapted to communicate with the memory and to execute the instructions stored by the memory, an etch chamber adapted to expose the substrate to the etchant in accordance with instructions from the processor, and a port adapted to pass communications between the processor and the etch chamber.

Method for etching polysilicon to have a smooth surface

A chemical downstream etching (CDE) that is selective to silicon nitrides (SiN) over silicon oxides (SiO) uses at least one of a CH.sub.3 F/CF.sub.4 /O.sub.2 recipe and a CH.sub.2 F.sub.2 /CF.sub.4 /O.sub.2 recipe. Inflow rates are mapped for the respective components of the input recipe to find settings that provide both high nitride etch rates and high selectivity towards the SiN material. A pins-up scheme is used for simultaneously stripping away backside nitride with topside nitride.

Selective plasma etching of silicon nitride in presence of silicon or

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Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Jitske Trevor