Applied Materials, Inc.

International Business Machines Corporation

Applies Materials Inc.

Kang Sub Yim

Li-Qun Xia

Alexandros T Demos

Bo Xie

Kelvin Chan

Sure Ngo

Yi Zheng

Dian Sugiarto

Yijun Liu

Ruitong Xiong

Vu Ngoc Tran Nguyen

Chi-I Lang

Deenesh Padhi

Peter Wai-Man Lee

Shaunak Mukherjee

Melissa M Tam

Srinivas D Nemani

Mei-Yee Shek

Taewan Kim

Eric Hollar

Mehul B Naik

Bok Hoen Kim

Thomas E Nowak

Abhijit Ashok Kangude

Sang H Ahn

Francimar Campana Schmitt

Weifeng Ye

Khaled A Elsheref

Rahul Rajeev

Pendar Ardalan

Lipan Li

Shubham Chowdhuri

Daniel C Edelstein

Son Van Nguyen

Alfred Grill

Ellie Y Yieh

Stephen McConnell Gates

Mark Joseph Saly

Hichem M'Saad

Mihaela A Balseanu

He Ren

Reza Arghavani

Amir Hamed Al-Bayati

Xinhai Han

Peter K Lee

Derek R Witty

Darryl D Restaino

Lakmal Charidu Kalutarage

Nagarajan Rajagopalan

Zhijun Jiang

Michael C Kwan

Steven E Molis

Dustin Wenpin Ho

Cheng Pan

Daemian Raj

William John Durand

Meiyee Shek

Sang In Yi

Lester A D'Cruz

Soovo Sen

Priyanka Dash

Mahendra Chhabra

Meiyee (Maggie Le) Shek

Jin Xu

Steven Reiter

Lihua Li Huang

Yi Ding

Zhenjiang “David” Cui

Josephine Ju-Hwei Chang Liu

Exemplary methods of forming a silicon-and-carbon-containing material may include flowing a silicon-and-carbon-containing precursor into a processing region of a semiconductor processing chamber. A substrate may be housed within the processing region of the semiconductor processing chamber. The methods may include forming a plasma within the processing region of the silicon-and-carbon-containing precursor. The plasma may be formed at a frequency above 15 MHz. The methods may include depositing a silicon-and-carbon-containing material on the substrate. The silicon-and-carbon-containing material as-deposited may be characterized by a dielectric constant below or about 3.0.

Systems and methods for depositing low-k dielectric films

Method of forming low-k films with reduced dielectric constant, reduced CHx content, and increased hardness are described. A siloxane film is on a substrate surface using a siloxane precursor comprising O—Si—O bonds and cured using ultraviolet light.

Single precursor low-k film deposition and UV cure for advanced technology node

Exemplary methods of forming a silicon-and-carbon-containing material may include flowing a silicon-oxygen-and-carbon-containing precursor into a processing region of a semiconductor processing chamber. A substrate may be housed within the processing region of the semiconductor processing chamber. The methods may include forming a plasma within the processing region of the silicon-and-carbon-containing precursor. The plasma may be formed at a frequency less than 15 MHz (e.g., 13.56 MHz). The methods may include depositing a silicon-and-carbon-containing material on the substrate. The silicon-and-carbon-containing material as-deposited may be characterized by a dielectric constant below or about 3.5 and a hardness greater than about 3 Gpa.

Semiconductor processing methods are described for forming UV-treated, low-&#x3ba; dielectric films. The methods may include flowing deposition precursors into a substrate processing region of a semiconductor processing chamber. The deposition precursors may include a silicon-and-carbon-containing precursor. The methods may further include generating a deposition plasma from the deposition precursors within the substrate processing region, and depositing a silicon-and-carbon-containing material on the substrate from plasma effluents of the deposition plasma. The as-deposited silicon-and-carbon-containing material may be characterized by greater than or about 5% hydrocarbon groups. The methods may still further include exposing the deposited silicon-and-carbon-containing material to ultraviolet light. The exposed silicon-and-carbon-containing material may be characterized by less than or about 2% hydrocarbon groups.

Systems and methods for forming UV-cured low-&#x3ba; dielectric films

Embodiments of the semiconductor processing methods to form low-&#x3ba; films on semiconductor substrates are described. The processing methods may include flowing deposition precursors into a substrate processing region of a semiconductor processing chamber. The deposition precursors may include a silicon-containing precursor that has at least one vinyl group. The methods may further include generating a deposition plasma in the substrate processing region from the deposition precursors. A silicon-and-carbon-containing material, characterized by a dielectric constant (&#x3ba; value) less than or about 3.0, may be deposited on the substrate from plasma effluents of the deposition plasma.

Systems and methods for depositing low-&#x3ba;dielectric films

Exemplary semiconductor processing methods to clean a substrate processing chamber are described. The methods may include depositing a dielectric film on a first substrate in a substrate processing chamber, where the dielectric film may include a silicon-carbon-oxide. The first substrate having the dielectric film may be removed from the substrate processing chamber, and the dielectric film may be deposited on at least one more substrate in the substrate processing chamber. The at least one more substrate may be removed from the substrate processing chamber after the dielectric film is deposited on the substrate. Etch plasma effluents may flow into the substrate processing chamber after the removal of a last substrate having the dielectric film. The etch plasma effluents may include greater than or about 500 sccm of NFplasma effluents, and greater than or about 1000 sccm of Oplasma effluents.

Systems and methods for cleaning low-k deposition chambers

Methods for deposition of high-hardness low-&#x3ba; dielectric films are described. More particularly, a method of processing a substrate is provided. The method includes flowing a precursor-containing gas mixture into a processing volume of a processing chamber having a substrate, the precursor having the general formula (I) wherein R, R, R, R, R, R, R, and Rare independently selected from hydrogen (H), alkyl, alkoxy, vinyl, silane, amine, or halide; maintaining the substrate at a pressure in a range of about 0.1 mTorr and about 10 Torr and at a temperature in a range of about 200&#xb0; C. to about 500&#xb0; C.; and generating a plasma at a substrate level to deposit a dielectric film on the substrate.

Low-k dielectric films

A method of forming a low-k dielectric layer with barrier properties is disclosed. The method comprises forming a dielectric layer by PECVD which is doped with one or more of boron, nitrogen or phosphorous. The dopant gas of some embodiments may be coflowed with the other reactants during deposition.

Low-k dielectric with self-forming barrier layer

Embodiments described herein generally relate to methods of manufacturing an oxide/polysilicon (OP) stack of a 3D memory cell for memory devices, such as NAND devices. The methods generally include treatment of the oxide and/or polysilicon materials with precursors during PECVD processes to lower the dielectric constant of the oxide and reduce the resistivity of the polysilicon. In one embodiment, the oxide material is treated with octamethylcyclotetrasiloxane (OMCTS) precursor. In another embodiment, germane (GeH) is introduced to a PECVD process to form SiGefilms with dopant. In yet another embodiment, a plasma treatment process is used to nitridate the interface between layers of the OP stack. The precursors and plasma treatment may be used alone or in any combination to produce OP stacks with low dielectric constant oxide and low resistivity polysilicon.

Low dielectric constant oxide and low resistance OP stack for 3D NAND application

Embodiments described herein provide a method for sealing a porous low-k dielectric film. The method includes forming a sealing layer on the porous low-k dielectric film using a cyclic process. The cyclic process includes repeating a sequence of depositing a sealing layer on the porous low-k dielectric film and treating the sealing layer until the sealing layer achieves a predetermined thickness. The treating of each intermediate sealing layer generates more reactive sites on the surface of each intermediate sealing layer, which improves the quality of the resulting sealing layer.

UV assisted silylation for porous low-k film sealing

A low-k dielectric porous silicon oxycarbon layer is formed within an integrated circuit. In one embodiment, a porogen and bulk layer containing silicon oxycarbon layer is deposited, the porogens are selectively removed from the formed layer without simultaneously cross-linking the bulk layer, and then the bulk layer material is cross-linked. In other embodiments, multiple silicon oxycarbon sublayers are deposited, porogens from each sub-layer are selectively removed without simultaneously cross-linking the bulk material of the sub-layer, and the sub-layers are cross-linked separately.

Forming a low-k dielectric layer with reduced dielectric constant and strengthened mechanical properties

Embodiments described herein generally relate to methods for processing a dielectric film on a substrate with UV energy. In one embodiment, a precursor film is deposited on the substrate, and the precursor film includes a plurality of porogen molecules. The precursor film is first exposed to UV energy at a first temperature to initiate a cross-linking process. After a first predetermined time, the temperature of the precursor film is increased to a second temperature for a second predetermined time to remove porogen molecules and to continue the cross-linking process. The resulting film is a porous low-k dielectric film having improved elastic modulus and hardness.

Enhancement of modulus and hardness for UV-cured ultra low-k dielectric films

Embodiments of the invention provide processes to selectively form a cobalt layer on a copper surface over exposed dielectric surfaces. Embodiments described herein control selectivity of deposition by preventing damage to the dielectric surface, repairing damage to the dielectric surface, such as damage which can occur during the cobalt deposition process, and controlling deposition parameters for the cobalt layer.

Cobalt selectivity improvement in selective cobalt process sequence

Embodiments of the disclosure generally provide multi-layer dielectric stack configurations that are resistant to plasma damage. Methods are disclosed for the deposition of thin protective low dielectric constant layers upon bulk low dielectric constant layers to create the layer stack. As a result, the dielectric constant of the multi-layer stack is unchanged during and after plasma processing.

Multi-layer dielectric stack for plasma damage protection

Growing community of inventors

Santa Clara, CA, United States of America

Kang Sub Yim