Applied Materials, Inc.

Mikael R Borjesson

Kyle Moran Hanson

Gregory J Wilson

Eric J Bergman

Paul R McHugh

John Lee Klocke

Nolan Layne Zimmerman

Adam Marc McClure

Deepak Saagar Kalaikadal

Paul Van Valkenburg

Charles A Cummings

Michael Windham

An electroplating system has a vessel assembly holding an electrolyte. A weir thief electrode assembly in the vessel assembly includes a plenum inside of a weir frame. The plenum divided into at least a first, a second and a third virtual thief electrode segment. A plurality of spaced apart openings through the weir frame lead out of the plenum. A weir ring is attached to the weir frame and guides flow of current during electroplating. The electroplating system provides process determined radial and circumferential current density control and does not require changing hardware components during set up.

Electroplating system

A method of controlling a headroom voltage of a transistor stage of an electroplating system to maintain a target power dissipation across the transistor stage may include maintaining a headroom voltage in the transistor stage for a load in the electroplating system. The method may also include measuring an instantaneous power dissipation in the transistor stage and generating a difference output representing a difference between the instantaneous power dissipation in the transistor stage and the target power dissipation in the transistor stage. A voltage across the transistor stage and the load may then be adjusted using the difference output such that the headroom voltage in the transistor stage is adjusted to maintain the target power dissipation in the transistor stage.

Electroplating controller with power based head-room control

A system for controlling the operation of apparatus for electroplating semiconductor substrates includes operating in a high mode of operation in which an off-the-shelf power supply provides current or voltage that is directly used to produce the channel control signal and in a low mode of operation in which the off-the-shelf power supply biases a circuit that provides a current or voltage to produce the channel control signal.

Plating power supply with headroom control and ethercat interface

A system for electroplating a substrate includes one or more controllers, with each controller having an FPGA with one or more output channels. A bulk power supply is connected to each controller. One or more transistors are associated with each output channel. An electroplating chamber has one or more electrodes, with each electrode connected to at least one output channel. The system may include a waveform capture and viewing circuit providing built-in process verification and diagnostic tools. The system may also have a throttle back mode which attempts to maintain proper anode current ratios by reducing setpoints of all anodes by the same percentage, if a fault condition causes a reduction in current to one of the anodes. Blackbox logging may also optionally be used for recording selected data values into a circular buffer having a selected amount of memory.

Substrate plating apparatus with multi-channel field programmable gate array

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Lakeside, MT, United States of America

Mikael R Borjesson