Lam Research Corporation

Lam Research Corpporation

Wenbing Yang

Samantha SiamHwa Tan

Jeffrey S Marks

Thorsten B Lill

Yang Pan

Keren Jacobs Kanarik

Taeseung Kim

Harmeet Singh

Samantha Siamhwa Tan

Yiwen Fan

Tamal Mukherjee

Ran Lin

Dennis Michael Hausmann

Meihua Shen

Jengyi Yu

Alexander Kabansky

Boris Volosskiy

Timothy William Weidman

Da Li

Richard Janek

Michal Danek

Anand Chandrashekar

Shih-Ked Lee

Samantha S H Tan

Chiukin Steven Lai

Michael J Wood

Prithu Sharma

Teh-Tien Su

Mohand Brouri

Wook Choi

Hong Shih

Girish Anant Dixit

Richard Alan Gottscho

Daniel Peter

Zhongwei Zhu

Kazuo Nojiri

Samantha Sh Tan

Chunhong Zhou

Tomihito Ohba

Ziad El Otell

Xiaoyu Kang

Development of resists are useful, for example, to form a patterning mask in the context of high-resolution patterning. Development can be accomplished using a halide-containing chemistry such as a hydrogen halide. A metal-containing resist film may be deposited on a semiconductor substrate using a dry or wet deposition technique. The resist film may be an EUV-sensitive organo-metal oxide or organo-metal-containing thin film resist. After exposure, the photopatterned metal-containing resist is developed using wet or dry development.

Photoresist development with halide chemistries

A method for cleaning a plasma processing chamber comprising one or more cycles is provided. Each cycle comprises performing an oxygen containing plasma cleaning phase, performing a volatile chemistry type residue cleaning phase, and performing a fluorine containing plasma cleaning phase.

Method for cleaning a chamber

A method of cleaning residue containing ruthenium (Ru) residue on at least one surface of a component of a semiconductor processing chamber is provided. The residue is exposed to a Ru cleaning composition comprising at least one of hypochlorite and Obased chemistries, wherein the Ru cleaning composition removes the Ru residue.

Method of cleaning chamber components with metal etch residues

A method for atomic layer etching a metal containing layer is provided. At least a region of a surface of the metal containing layer is modified to form a modified metal containing region by exposing a surface of the metal containing layer to a modification gas, wherein adjacent to the modified metal containing region remains an unmodified metal containing region. The modified metal containing region is selectively removed with respect to the unmodified metal containing region by exposing the surface of the metal containing layer to an inert bombardment plasma generated from an inert gas.

Atomic layer etching for subtractive metal etch

A method is provided. A substrate situated in a chamber is exposed to a halogen-containing gas comprising an element selected from the group consisting of silicon, germanium, carbon, titanium, and tin, and igniting a plasma to modify a surface of the substrate and form a modified surface. The substrate is exposed to an activated activation gas to etch at least part of the modified surface.

Chemical etch nonvolatile materials for MRAM patterning

A method for selectively etching a stack with respect to a mask is provided. An atomic layer etch is provided to at least partially etch the stack, wherein the atomic layer etch forms at least some residue. An ion beam is provided to etch the stack, wherein the ion beam etch removes at least some of the residue from the atomic layer etch.

Atomic layer etch and ion beam etch patterning

Etching a refractory metal or other high surface binding energy material on a substrate can maintain or increase the smoothness of the metal/high EO surface, in some cases produce extreme smoothing. A substrate having an exposed refractory metal/high EO surface is provided. The refractory metal/high EO surface is exposed to a modification gas to modify the surface and form a modified refractory metal/high EO surface. The modified refractory metal/high EO surface is exposed to an energetic particle to preferentially remove the modified refractory metal/high EO surface relative to an underlying unmodified refractory metal/high EO surface such that the exposed refractory metal/high EO surface after removing the modified refractory metal/high EO surface is as smooth or smoother than the substrate surface before exposing the substrate surface to the modification gas.

Atomic layer etching and smoothing of refractory metals and other high surface binding energy materials

Methods of depositing tungsten into high aspect ratio features using a dep-etch-dep process integrating various deposition techniques with alternating pulses of surface modification and removal during etch are provided herein.

Atomic layer etch of tungsten for enhanced tungsten deposition fill

Methods and apparatus for performing high energy atomic layer etching are provided herein. Methods include providing a substrate having a material to be etched, exposing a surface of the material to a modification gas to modify the surface and form a modified surface, and exposing the modified surface to an energetic particle to preferentially remove the modified surface relative to an underlying unmodified surface where the energetic particle has an ion energy sufficient to overcome an average surface binding energy of the underlying unmodified surface. The energy of the energetic particle used is very high; in some cases, the power applied to a bias used when exposing the modified surface to the energetic particle is at least 150 eV.

High energy atomic layer etching

Apparatuses for etching metal by depositing a material reactive with a metal to be etched and a halogen to form a volatile species and exposing the substrate to a halogen-containing gas and activation gas to etch the substrate are provided. Deposited materials may include silicon, germanium, titanium, carbon, tin, and combinations thereof. Apparatuses are suitable for fabricating MRAM structures and may be used to integrate ALD and ALE processes without breaking vacuum.

Dry plasma etch method to pattern MRAM stack

Methods and apparatuses for etching semiconductor material on substrates using atomic layer etching by chemisorption, by deposition, or by both chemisorption and deposition mechanisms in combination with oxide passivation are described herein. Methods involving atomic layer etching using a chemisorption mechanism involve exposing the semiconductor material to chlorine to chemisorb chlorine onto the substrate surface and exposing the modified surface to argon to remove the modified surface. Methods involving atomic layer etching using a deposition mechanism involve exposing the semiconductor material to a sulfur-containing gas and hydrogen to deposit and thereby modify the substrate surface and removing the modified surface.

Atomic layer etching 3D structures: Si and SiGe and Ge smoothness on horizontal and vertical surfaces

Methods are provided for integrating atomic layer etch and atomic layer deposition by performing both processes in the same chamber or reactor. Methods involve sequentially alternating between atomic layer etch and atomic layer deposition processes to prevent feature degradation during etch, improve selectivity, and encapsulate sensitive layers of a semiconductor substrate.

Integrating atomic scale processes: ALD (atomic layer deposition) and ALE (atomic layer etch)

Growing community of inventors

Fremont, CA, United States of America

Wenbing Yang