Applied Materials, Inc.

Sundarapandian Ramalinga Vijayalakshmi Reddy

Kirankumar Neelasandra Savandaiah

Yong Cao

Shane Lavan

Rongjun Wang

Jianxin Lei

Lei Zhou

Irena H Wysok

Halbert Chong

Zhiyong Wang

Randal Dean Schmieding

John C Forster

Keith A Miller

Tza-Jing Gung

Renu Whig

Tiefeng Shi

Madan Kumar Shimoga Mylarappa

Gang Fu

Mingdong Li

Wei Dou

Avinash Nayak

Methods and apparatus reduce defects in substrates processed in a physical vapor (PVD) chamber. In some embodiments, a method for cleaning a process kit disposed in an inner volume of a process chamber includes positioning a non-sputtering shutter disk on a substrate support of the PVD chamber; energizing an oxygen-containing cleaning gas disposed in the inner volume of the PVD chamber to create a plasma reactive with carbon-based materials; and heating the process kit having a carbon-based material adhered thereto while exposed to the plasma to remove at least a portion of the carbon-based material adhered to the process kit.

Shutter disk for physical vapor deposition (PVD) chamber

Target profile for a physical vapor deposition chamber target

Embodiments of process shield for use in process chambers are provided herein. In some embodiments, a process shield for use in a process chamber includes: an annular body having an upper portion and a lower portion extending downward and radially inward from the upper portion, wherein the upper portion includes a plurality of annular trenches on an upper surface thereof and having a plurality of slots disposed therebetween to fluidly couple the plurality of annular trenches, wherein one or more inlets extend from an outer surface of the annular body to an outermost trench of the plurality of annular trenches.

Gas injection process kit to eliminate arcing and improve uniform gas distribution for a PVD process

Methods and apparatus for processing a substrate are provided herein. For example, a processing chamber for processing a substrate comprises a sputtering target, a chamber wall at least partially defining an inner volume within the processing chamber and connected to ground, a power source comprising an RF power source, a process kit surrounding the sputtering target and a substrate support, an auto capacitor tuner (ACT) connected to ground and the sputtering target, and a controller configured to energize the cleaning gas disposed in the inner volume of the processing chamber to create the plasma and tune the sputtering target using the ACT to maintain a predetermined potential difference between the plasma in the inner volume and the process kit during the etch process to remove sputtering material from the process kit, wherein the predetermined potential difference is based on a resonant point of the ACT.

Methods and apparatus for processing a substrate

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Bengaluru, India

Sundarapandian Ramalinga Vijayalakshmi Reddy