Infineon Technologies Ag

John Pohl

Tobias Mono

Nirmal Chaudhary

Veit Klee

Paul Wensley

Martin Commons

Paul Schroeder

Velt Klee

A nitride hard mask ( ) is used to isolate active areas of a DRAM cell. The shallow trench isolation (STI) method includes forming memory cells comprising deep trenches ( ) on a semiconductor wafer ( ). The memory cell deep trenches ( ) are separated from active areas ( ) by a region of substrate ( ). A nitride hard mask ( ) is formed over the semiconductor wafer ( ). The wafer ( ) is patterned with the nitride hard mask ( ), and the wafer ( ) is etched to remove the region of substrate ( ) between the deep trenches and active areas to provide shallow trench isolation. An etch chemistry selective to the nitride hard mask ( ) is used.

Self-aligned STI process using nitride hard mask

Method of measuring combined critical dimension and overlay in single step

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Leicester, United Kingdom

John Pohl