Texas Instruments Corporation

Nathan J Kruse

Jin Zhao

Tae S Kim

Ralf B Willecke

August J Fischer

Ignacio Blanco

Sarah Hartwig

Ignacio Blanco-Rivera

The present invention provides, in one embodiment, a process for cleaning a deposition chamber (). The process includes a step () of forming a reactive plasma cleaning zone by dissociating a gaseous fluorocompound introduced into a deposition chamber having an interior surface and in a presence of a plasma. The process () further includes a step () of ramping a flow rate of said gaseous fluorocompound to move the reactive plasma cleaning zone throughout the deposition chamber, thereby preventing a build-up of localized metal compound deposits on the interior surface. Other embodiments advantageously incorporate the process () into a system () for cleaning a deposition chamber () and a method of manufacturing semiconductor devices ().

Deposition tool cleaning process having a moving plasma zone

A method of forming a film stack in an integrated circuit, said method comprising depositing a layer of silicon carbide adjacent a first layer of dielectric material, depositing a layer of silicon nitride adjacent the layer of silicon carbide, and depositing a second layer of dielectric material adjacent the layer of silicon nitride.

Bi-layer etch stop process for defect reduction and via stress migration improvement

The present invention provides, in one embodiment, a method of manufacturing semiconductor devices. The method comprises transferring one or more substrate into a deposition chamber and depositing material layers on the substrate. The chamber has an interior surface. The method further includes, between the transfers, cleaning the deposition chamber using an in situ ramped cleaning process when material layer deposits in the deposition chamber reaches a predefined thickness. The in situ ramped cleaning process comprises forming a reactive plasma cleaning zone by dissociating a gaseous fluorocompound introduced into a deposition chamber in a presence of a plasma. The cleaning process further includes ramping a flow rate of the gaseous fluorocompound in a presence of the plasma to move the reactive plasma cleaning zone throughout the deposition chamber, thereby preventing a build-up of localized metal compound deposits on the interior surface.

Method of manufacturing semiconductor devices comprising a deposition tool cleaning process having a moving plasma zone

An improvement to a Novellus HDP SPEED reactor chamber is described. An evacuation port of the Novellus SPEED Chamber is at one location in the chamber to remove injected cleaning gas from the chamber and there is a single input for cleaning gas connection into the chamber. In accordance an improvement a plurality of clean gas injectors is positioned on an adapter in the chamber and connected to the single input gas connection for distributing the cleaning gas in the chamber with the injectors spaced away from the evacuation port. The adapter is a U-shaped adapter and is positioned in the chamber with the adapter connected at the base to the single input gas connection. The adapter has two semicircular branch legs extending in opposite directions about the chamber to free ends that are connected to gas injectors. The free ends with the injectors are located in the chamber almost on the opposite end of the chamber from the evacuation port. Each of the two branch legs includes a second injector midway along the branch legs between the free ends and point of the branch to provide four injectors to evenly distribute the clean gas in the chamber.

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McKinney, TX, United States of America

Nathan J Kruse