Applied Materials, Inc.

Yu Lei

Yi Xu

Srinivas Gandikota

Xinyu Fu

Dien-Yeh Wu

Avgerinos V Gelatos

Kazuya Daito

Seshadri Ganguli

Vikash Banthia

Yufei Hu

Xianmin Tang

Bo Zheng

He Ren

Xinliang Lu

Sang Ho Yu

Kai Wu

Jallepally Ravi

Wei V Tang

Mei Yin Chang

Tae Hong Ha

Wei Lei

Bhushan N Zope

Pingyan Lei

Mathew Abraham

Mehul B Naik

Paul F Ma

Yixiong Yang

Lin Dong

Xuesong Lu

Feiyue Ma

Jiajie Cen

Andrew Nguyen

Hoon Sik Kim

Philip Allan Kraus

Anantha K Subramani

Rongjun Wang

Tza-Jing Gung

Maitreyee Mahajani

Shih Chung Chen

David T Or

Sang-Hyeob Lee

Atif Noori

Kevin Kashefi

Sang-Ho Yu

Xi Cen

Shirish A Pethe

Chi-Chou Lin

David P Thompson

John C Forster

Muhammad M Rasheed

Naomi Yoshida

Hao Chen

Patricia M Liu

Xiaoxiong Yuan

Sahil Patel

Muhannad Mustafa

Umesh M Kelkar

Benjamin Schmiege

Raymond Hoiman Hung

Manjunatha P Koppa

Zhiyuan Wu

Takashi Kuratomi

Mang-Mang Ling

Wenyu Zhang

Guoqiang Jian

Jing Zhou

Chung Liu

Sandesh Yadamane

Jin Hee Park

Wei W Wang

Kelvin Chan

Siddarth A Krishnan

Jeffrey W Anthis

Chien-Teh Kao

Mehran Behdjat

Wei Ti Lee

Joung Joo Lee

Bencherki Mebarki

Yogananda Sarode Vishwanath

Xiangjin Xie

Sundar Ramamurthy

Tao Huang

Kevin Vincent Moraes

Atashi Basu

Michael Sterling Jackson

Xiaodong Wang

Chong Jiang

Tsung-Han Yang

Xue Chang

Kavita Shah

Cong Trinh

Faruk Gungor

Alexander Jansen

Martin Jeff Salinas

Hyman W H Lam

Hyoung-Chan Ha

Chih-Hsun Hsu

Hua Ai

Chikuang Charles Wang

Shi You

Process chamber shower head

Embodiments of the disclosure are directed to methods of removing metal oxide from a substrate surface by exposing the substrate surface to a hydrogen (H) plasma and pulses of RF. In some embodiments, the substrate surface has at least one feature thereon, the at least one feature defining a trench having a top surface, a bottom surface, and two opposed sidewalls. The hydrogen (H) plasma and pulses of RF remove substantially all of the metal oxide, e.g., tungsten oxide (WOx), molybdenum oxide (MoOx), or ruthenium oxide (RuOx), from the substrate surface, without damaging the dielectric and/or critical dimension (CD)/profile of the structure. A metal fill can then be selectively deposited in the trench.

Selective metal selectivity improvement with RF pulsing

Described is a process to clean up junction interfaces for fabricating semiconductor devices involving forming low-resistance electrical connections between vertically separated regions. An etch can be performed to remove silicon oxide on silicon surface at the bottom of a recessed feature. Described are methods and apparatus for etching up the bottom oxide of a hole or trench while minimizing the effects to the underlying epitaxial layer and to the dielectric layers on the field and the corners of metal gate structures. The method for etching features involves a reaction chamber equipped with a combination of capacitively coupled plasma and inductive coupled plasma. CHFgases and plasma are used to form protection layer, which enables the selectively etching of bottom silicon dioxide by NH—NFplasma. Ideally, silicon oxide on EPI is removed to ensure low-resistance electric contact while the epitaxial layer and field/corner dielectric layers are—etched only minimally or not at all.

Directional selective junction clean with field polymer protections

Embodiments of methods and associated apparatus for filling a feature in a substrate are provided herein. In some embodiments, a method of depositing tungsten in features of a substrate includes: depositing a seed layer consisting essentially of tungsten in the features via a physical vapor deposition (PVD) process; and depositing a bulk layer consisting essentially of tungsten in the features via a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process to fill the features such that the deposition of the bulk layer is selective to within the features as compared to a field region of the substrate, wherein the CVD process is performed by flowing hydrogen gas (H) at a first flow rate and a tungsten precursor at a second flow rate, and wherein the first flow rate is less than the second flow rate.

Self field-suppression CVD tungsten (W) fill on PVD W liner

A method of pre-cleaning in a semiconductor structure includes performing a plasma pre-treatment process to remove impurities from a surface of a semiconductor structure comprising a metal layer and a dielectric layer, performing a selective etch process to remove molybdenum oxide from a surface of the metal layer, the selective etch process comprising soaking the semiconductor structure in a precursor including molybdenum chloride (MoCl, MoCl) at a temperature of between 250° C. and 350° C., and performing a post-treatment process to remove chlorine residues and by-products of the selective etch process on the surface of the semiconductor structure.

Metal oxide preclean for bottom-up gapfill in MEOL and BEOL

Process chamber manifold

A method of selective metal removal via gradient oxidation for a gap-fill includes performing process cycles, each process cycle including placing a wafer having a semiconductor structure thereon into a first processing station, the semiconductor structure including a dielectric layer patterned with a feature formed therein and a seed layer formed on sidewalls and a bottom surface of the feature and a top surface of the dielectric layer, performing a reduction process on the wafer in the first processing station, performing a gradient oxidation process on the wafer in the second processing station, performing a gradient etch process on the wafer in the third processing station, and performing the gradient etch process on the wafer in the fourth processing station, wherein the first, second, third, and fourth processing stations are located in an interior volume of a processing chamber.

One chamber multi-station selective metal removal

Methods and apparatus for processing substrates are provided herein. In some embodiments, a process kit for a substrate support includes: an upper edge ring made of quartz and having an upper surface and a lower surface, wherein the upper surface is substantially planar and the lower surface includes a stepped lower surface to define a radially outermost portion and a radially innermost portion of the upper edge ring.

Process kit for a substrate support

Methods for reducing resistivity of metal gapfill include depositing a conformal layer in an opening of a feature and on a field of a substrate with a first thickness of the conformal layer of approximately 10 microns or less, depositing a non-conformal metal layer directly on the conformal layer at a bottom of the opening and directly on the field using an anisotropic deposition process. A second thickness of the non-conformal metal layer on the field and on the bottom of the feature is approximately 30 microns or greater. And depositing a metal gapfill material in the opening of the feature and on the field where the metal gapfill material completely fills the opening without any voids.

Methods for forming metal gapfill with low resistivity

Provided is a processing chamber configured to contain a semiconductor substrate in a processing region of the chamber. The processing chamber includes a remote plasma unit and a direct plasma unit, wherein one of the remote plasma unit or the direct plasma unit generates a remote plasma and the other of the remote plasma unit or the direct plasma unit generates a direct plasma. The combination of a remote plasma unit and a direct plasma unit is used to remove, etch, clean, or treat residue on a substrate from previous processing and/or from native oxide formation. The combination of a remote plasma unit and direct plasma unit is used to deposit thin films on a substrate.

Processing chamber with multiple plasma units

A method of gap filling a feature on a substrate decreases the feature-to-feature gap fill height variation by using a tungsten halide soak treatment. In some embodiments, the method may include heating a substrate to a temperature of approximately 350 degrees Celsius to approximately 450 degrees Celsius, exposing the substrate to a tungsten halide gas at a process pressure of approximately 5 Torr to approximately 25 Torr, soaking the substrate for a soak time of approximately 5 seconds to approximately 60 seconds with the tungsten halide gas, and performing a metal preclean process and a gap fill deposition on a plurality of features on the substrate after soaking of the substrate has completed.

Methods for minimizing feature-to-feature gap fill height variations

Embodiments of process kits for use in a process chamber are provided herein. In some embodiments, a process kit for use in a process chamber includes: a chamber liner having a tubular body with an upper portion and a lower portion; a confinement plate coupled to the lower portion of the chamber liner and extending radially inward from the chamber liner, wherein the confinement plate includes a plurality of slots; a shield ring disposed within the chamber liner and movable between the upper portion of the chamber liner and the lower portion of the chamber liner; and a plurality of ground straps coupled to the shield ring at a first end of each ground strap of the plurality of ground straps and to the confinement plate at a second end of each ground strap to maintain electrical connection between the shield ring and the chamber liner when the shield ring moves.

Metal oxide preclean chamber with improved selectivity and flow conductance

Embodiments of the disclosure relate to methods of depositing tungsten. Some embodiments of the disclosure provide methods for depositing tungsten which are performed at relatively low temperatures. Some embodiments of the disclosure provide methods in which the ratio between reactant gasses is controlled. Some embodiments of the disclosure provide selective deposition of tungsten. Some embodiments of the disclosure provide methods for depositing tungsten films at a low temperature with relatively low roughness, stress and impurity levels.

Selective tungsten deposition at low temperatures

Methods for pre-cleaning substrates having metal and dielectric surfaces are described. A temperature of a pedestal comprising a cooling feature on which a substrate is located is set to less than or equal to 100° C. The substrate is exposed to a plasma treatment to remove chemical residual and/or impurities from features of the substrate including a metal bottom, dielectric sidewalls, and/or a field of dielectric and/or repair surface defects in the dielectric sidewalls and/or the field of the dielectric. The plasma treatment may be an oxygen plasma, for example, a direct oxygen plasma. Processing tools and computer readable media for practicing the method are also described.

Low-temperature plasma pre-clean for selective gap fill

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Belmont, CA, United States of America

Yu Lei