Lam Research Corporation

Novellus Systems Incorporated

Other

International Business Machines Corporation

Lan Research Corporation

Patrick A Van Cleemput

Bart Jan Van Schravendijk

Shruti Vivek Thombare

Michal Danek

Raashina Humayun

David Charles Smith

Richard Stephan Wise

Seshasayee Varadarajan

Joshua Collins

Akhil N Singhal

Arpan Pravin Mahorowala

Derek Wong

Michelle T Schulberg

Gorun Butail

Artur Kolics

Kaihan Abidi Ashtiani

Bunsen B Nie

Hanna Bamnolker

Francisco J Juarez

William T Lee

Nicholas Muga Ndiege

Griffin John Kennedy

Yezdi N Dordi

George D Papasouliotis

Sanjay Gopinath

Larry Zhao

Adrianne K Tipton

Jonathan David Mohn

Chiukin Steven Lai

Praveen Nalla

Martin E Freeborn

Dennis Michael Hausmann

George Andrew Antonelli

Ishtak Karim

Ravi Kumar Laxman

Nerissa Sue Draeger

Feng Wang

Shawn M Hamilton

Jen Shu

David Fang Wei Chen

Ilanit Fisher

Kok Heng Chew

Wenbo Liang

Teresa Pong

George Matamis

Laertis Economikos

Deenesh Padhi

Eric H Lenz

Richard Anthony Conti

Ramesh Chandrasekharan

Samantha SiamHwa Tan

Shih-Ked Lee

Lawrence Schloss

Ashima B Chakravarti

Yang Pan

Juwen Gao

Haiying Fu

Thomas W Mountsier

Samantha S H Tan

Nader Shamma

Jun Xue

Krishnan Shrinivasan

Krishna Nittala

Yongsik Yu

Qingguo Wu

Brian Lu

Mark A Logan

Jeong-Seok Na

Sasangan Ramanathan

Daniel Peter

Novy Sastrawati Tjokro

Da Li

Patrick Christopher Joyce

Aaron Bingham

Awnish Gupta

Jason Daejin Park

Karthik Subramanian Colinjivadi

Tirunelveli Subramaniam Ravi

Younghee Lee

Vinayakaraddy Gulabal

Lie Zhao

Jianing Sun

Ravi Vellanki

Robert D Tas

Yen-Chang Chen

William J King

Kathy Konjuh

Yao-Tsung Hsieh

Zhongbo Yan

Prodyut Majumder

Hongxiang Zhao

Ji Yeon Kim

Michelle Margarita Flores Espinosa

Process condition management facilitates the combination of dry development and etching into a single process chamber; eliminating the necessity for a post-dry development bake step during semiconductor manufacturing. Methods and apparatuses for rapidly instituting a large drop in process chamber pressure allow thermal dry development and an Oflash treatment or thermal dry development and plasma hardmask open operations to take place without wafer transfer.

Integration of dry development and etch processes for EUV patterning in a single process chamber

Provided herein are low resistance metallization stack structures for logic and memory applications and related methods of fabrication. In some embodiments, thin metal oxynitride or metal nitride nucleation layers are deposited followed by deposition of a pure metal conductor. The nucleation layer is amorphous, which templates large pure metal film grain growth and reduced resistivity. Further, certain embodiments of the methods described below convert most or all of the metal oxynitride nucleation layer to a pure metal layer, further lowering the resistivity.

Deposition of films using molybdenum precursors

Provided are methods of filling patterned features with molybdenum (Mo). The methods involve selective deposition of Mo films on bottom metal-containing surfaces of a feature including dielectric sidewalls. The selective growth of Mo on the bottom surface allows bottom-up growth and high quality, void-free fill. Also provided are related apparatus.

Molybdenum deposition

A showerhead includes a plurality of plenums and a plurality of through holes positioned in the plurality of plenums. The plenums are stacked in a sequential order in an axial direction perpendicular to a semiconductor substrate. The plenums extend radially fully across the semiconductor substrate. The plenums are disjoint from each other and are configured to respectively supply a first metal precursor, a second metal precursor, and a reactant via the respective plenums without intermixing the first metal precursor, the second metal precursor, and the reactant in the plenums. The through holes of the respective plenums are arranged in a radial direction, which is perpendicular to the axial direction, in the same sequential order as the sequential order of the plenums. The through holes of the plenums open along a flat surface at a bottom of the showerhead. The flat surface extends radially fully across the bottom of the showerhead.

Systems and methods for homogenous intermixing of precursors in alloy atomic layer deposition

Embodiments of methods of filling features with molybdenum (Mo) include depositing a first layer of Mo in a feature including an opening and an interior and non-conformally treating the first layer such that regions near the opening preferentially treated over regions in the interior. In some embodiments, a second Mo layer is deposited on the treated first layer. Embodiments of methods of filling features with Mo include controlling Mo precursor flux to transition between conformal and non-conformal fill.

Molybdenum fill

A method for reducing bending of word lines in a memory cell includes a) providing a substrate including a plurality of word lines arranged adjacent to one another and above a plurality of transistors; b) depositing a layer of film on the plurality of word lines using a deposition process; c) after depositing the layer of film, measuring word line bending; d) comparing the word line bending to a predetermined range; e) based on the word line bending, adjusting at least one of nucleation delay and grain size of the deposition process; and f) repeating b) to e) one or more times using one or more substrates, respectively, until the word line bending is within the predetermined range.

Line bending control for memory applications

Various showerheads and methods are provided. A showerhead may include a faceplate partially defined by a front surface and a back surface, a back plate having a gas inlet, a first conical frustum surface, and a second conical frustum surface, a plenum volume fluidically connected to the gas inlet and at least partially defined by the gas inlet, the back surface of the faceplate, the first conical frustum surface, and the second conical frustum surface, and a baffle plate positioned within the plenum volume, and having a plurality of baffle plate through-holes extending through the baffle plate. The second conical frustum surface may be positioned radially outwards from the first conical frustum surface with respect to a center axis of the showerhead, and the second conical frustum surface may be positioned along the center axis farther from the gas inlet than the first conical frustum surface.

Metal deposition

Provided herein are low resistance metallization stack structures for logic and memory applications and related methods of fabrication. The methods involve forming bulk conductive films on thin low resistivity transition metal layers that have large grain size. The bulk conductive films follow the grains of the low resistivity transition metal films, resulting in large grain size. Also provided are devices including template layers and bulk films.

Deposition of tungsten on molybdenum templates

Tin oxide films are used to create air gaps during semiconductor substrate processing. Tin oxide films, disposed between exposed layers of other materials, such as SiOand SiN can be selectively etched using a plasma formed in an H-containing process gas. The etching creates a recessed feature in place of the tin oxide between the surrounding materials. A third material, such as SiOis deposited over the resulting recessed feature without fully filling the recessed feature, forming an air gap. A method for selectively etching tin oxide in a presence of SiO, SiC, SiN, SiOC, SiNO, SiCNO, or SiCN, includes, in some embodiments, contacting the substrate with a plasma formed in a process gas comprising at least about 50% H. Etching of tin oxide can be performed without using an external bias at the substrate and is preferably performed at a temperature of less than about 100° C.

Method to create air gaps

Thin tin oxide films are used as spacers in semiconductor device manufacturing. In one implementation, formation of spacers involves deposition of a tin oxide layer on a semiconductor substrate having multiple protruding features. The deposition is performed in a deposition apparatus having a controller with program instructions configured to cause sequential contacting of the semiconductor substrate with a tin-containing precursor and an oxygen-containing precursor such as to coat the semiconductor substrate having the protruding features with a tin oxide layer. Next, tin oxide film is removed from horizontal surfaces, without being completely removed from the sidewalls of the protruding features. Next, the material of protruding features is etched away, leaving tin oxide spacers on the semiconductor substrate.

Tin oxide thin film spacers in semiconductor device manufacturing

Atomic layer deposition of metal films

An Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) method to deposit a metal oxide layer onto an organic photoresist on a substrate using a highly reactive organic metal precursor. The deposition method protects the organic photoresist from loss and degradation from exposure to oxygen species during subsequent ALD cycles. The organic metal precursor may be an amino type precursor or a methoxy type precursor.

Deposition tool and method for depositing metal oxide films on organic materials

A method includes arranging a substrate in a processing chamber, and exposing the substrate to a gas mixture including a first metal precursor gas and a second metal precursor gas to deposit a first metal precursor and a second metal precursor onto the substrate at the same time. The method further includes purging the processing chamber, supplying a reactant common to both the first metal precursor and the second metal precursor to form a layer of an alloy on the substrate, and purging the processing chamber.

Growing community of inventors

San Jose, CA, United States of America

Patrick A Van Cleemput