Imec Vzw

Lan Peng

Eric Beyne

Gerald Beyer

Soon-Wook Kim

Gerald Peter Beyer

Robert Miller

Erik Sleeckx

Patrick Verdonck

The disclosed technology generally relates to integrating semiconductor dies and more particularly to bonding semiconductor substrates. In an aspect, a method of bonding semiconductor substrates includes providing a first substrate and a second substrate. Each of the first substrate and the second substrate comprises a dielectric bonding layer comprising one or more a silicon carbon oxide (SiCO) layer, a silicon carbon nitride (SiCN) layer or a silicon carbide (SiC) layer. The method additionally includes, prior to bonding the first and second substrates, pre-treating each of the dielectric bonding layer of the first substrate and the dielectric bonding layer of the second substrate. Pre-treating includes a first plasma activation process in a plasma comprising an inert gas, a second plasma activation process in a plasma comprising oxygen, and a wet surface treatment including a water rinsing step or an exposure to a water-containing ambient. The method additionally includes bonding the first and the second substrates by contacting the dielectric bonding layer of the first substrate and the dielectric bonding layer of the second substrate to form a substrate assembly. The method further includes post-bond annealing the assembly.

Method of bonding semiconductor substrates

The disclosed technology generally relates to semiconductor wafer bonding, and more particularly to direct bonding by contacting surfaces of the semiconductor wafers. In one aspect, a method for bonding a first semiconductor substrate to a second semiconductor substrate by direct bonding is described. The substrates are both provided on their contact surfaces with a dielectric layer, followed by a CMP step for reducing the roughness of the dielectric layer. Then a layer of SiCN is deposited onto the dielectric layer, followed by a CMP step which reduces the roughness of the SiCN layer to the order of 1 tenth of a nanometer. Then the substrates are subjected to a pre-bond annealing step and then bonded by direct bonding, possibly preceded by one or more pre-treatments of the contact surfaces, and followed by a post-bond annealing step, at a temperature of less than or equal to 250&#xb0; C. It has been found that the bond strength is excellent, even at the above named annealing temperatures, which are lower than presently known in the art.

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Leuven, Belgium

Lan Peng