Sharp Laboratories of America, Inc

Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha Corporation

Other

Advanced Lcd Technologies Development Center Co., Ltd.

Kabushiki Kaisha Ekisho Sentan Gijutsu Kaihatsu Center

Yukihiko Nakata

Apostolos T Voutsas

John Hartzell

Masashi Maekawa

Kazufumi Azuma

Takashi Itoga

Akitoshi Yokota

Masashi Goto

Tetsuya Okamoto

Takuya Matsuo

Tetsuya Ide

Hitoshi Sannomiya

Manabu Itoh

Masaki Fujihara

Michiteru Ayukawa

Atsushi Sasaki

Masahiro Date

Yasumi Inoue

Sota Moriuchi

Toshimasa Hamada

Hideo Sugai

Takeshi Hosoda

A plasma treatment apparatus generates a plasma in a treatment vessel by an electromagnetic wave radiated from an electromagnetic wave radiation portion into the treatment vessel to perform plasma treatment by the plasma. At least a part of a wall constituting the treatment vessel includes at least a part of an electromagnetic wave transmission path which transmits the electromagnetic wave.

Plasma treatment apparatus and plasma treatment method

In a plasma processing apparatus, electromagnetic waves are radiated from slots of waveguides into a processing chamber via dielectric windows that are supported on beams, thereby generating a plasma. A substrate, which is an object of processing, is processed by the generated plasma. Dielectric plates are attached to those surfaces of the beams, which are opposed to the processing chamber. The thickness of each dielectric plate is set at &#xbd; or more of the intra-dielectric wavelength of the electromagnetic waves. Using the plasma processing apparatus, a large-area processing can uniformly be performed.

Plasma processing apparatus with dielectric plates and fixing member wavelength dependent spacing

Disclosed is a film-forming method, comprising supplying into a plasma processing chamber at least three kinds of gases including a silicon compound gas, an oxidizing gas, and a rare gas, the percentage of the partial pressure of the rare gas (Pr) based on the total pressure being not smaller than 85%, i.e., 85%&#x2266;Pr&#x3c;100%, and generating a plasma within the plasma processing chamber so as to form a film of silicon oxide on a substrate to be processed.

Thin-film forming method using silane and an oxidizing gas

A plasma processing apparatus comprises: a chamberhaving at least one opening and for generating plasma; a dielectric memberprovided to cover the opening air-tightly; at least one wave guideprovided in the exterior of the chamber such that the one end side opposes the dielectric member; an electromagnetic wave sourceprovided on the other end side of the wave guide; a plurality of holesprovided on a surface opposing the dielectric member of the wave guide; and hole area adjusting meansprovided in at least one of the above-mentioned holes so as to adjust the opening area of the hole.

Plasma processing apparatus

Film-forming method, method of manufacturing semiconductor device, semiconductor device, method of manufacturing display device, and display device

The present invention concerns a method of forming multi-layers such as base-coat and active layers for TFTs. In accordance with the preferred embodiment of the present invention, a first layer is formed on a transparent substrate using a physical vapor deposition. And a second layer is sequentially formed using a physical vapor deposition on the first layer without breaking vacuum. The present invention simplifies the TFT fabrication while decreasing the water or hydrogen content within multilayers including a base-coat (BC) layer.

Method of forming multi-layers for a thin film transistor

A metal induced crystallization process is provided which employs an amorphous silicon film precursor deposited by physical vapor deposition, wherein the precursor film does not readily undergo crystallization by partial solid phase crystallization. Using this physical vapor deposition amorphous silicon precursor film, the amorphous silicon film is transformed to polysilicon by metal induced crystallization wherein the crystalline growth occurs fastest at regions that have been augmented with a metal catalyst and proceeds extremely slowly, practically zero, at regions which bear no metal catalyst. Accordingly, by use of the physical vapor deposition amorphous silicon precursor film in the process of the present invention, the metal induced crystallization process may take place at higher annealing temperatures and shorter annealing times without solid phase crystallization taking place. The process has a faster throughput than previous metal induced crystallization processes, results in a polysilicon film having virtually no catalyst impurities remaining in the film, and results in a film having uniform material characteristics. The resulting polysilicon film may be utilized in thin film transistors or liquid crystal displays.

Semiconductor device and a method of creating the same utilizing metal induced crystallization while suppressing partial solid phase crystallization

A method of physical vapor deposition includes selecting a target material; mixing at least two gases to form a sputtering gas mixture, wherein a first sputtering gas is helium and a second sputtering gas is taken from the gases consisting of neon, argon krypton, xenon and radon; forming a plasma in the sputtering gas mixture atmosphere to sputter atoms from the target material to the substrate thereby forming a layer of target material on the substrate; and annealing the substrate and the deposited layer thereon. An improved physical vapor deposition vacuum chamber includes a target held in a target holder, a substrate held in a substrate holder, a plasma arc generator, and heating rods. A sputtering gas feed system is provided for introducing a mixture of sputtering gases into the chamber; as is a vacuum mechanism comprising at least one turbomolecular pump for evacuating the chamber to a pressure of less than 16 mTorr during deposition. The method and apparatus are particularly suited for forming thin film transistors and liquid crystal displays having thin film transistors therein.

Apparatus to sputter silicon films

A TFT fabricated from a single crystal grain, and fabrication method has been provided. A large crystal grain is made by precise control of annealment, transition metal concentration, the density of transition metal nucleation sites, and the distance between nucleation sites. In one aspect of the invention, a diffusion layer permits the continual delivery of transition metal at a rate that both supports the lateral growth of di-silicide, and large distances between nucleation sites.

Single crystal TFT from continuous transition metal delivery method

A thin film transistor includes an active silicon layer deposited by physical vapor deposition (PVD), wherein a silicon precursor is doped with impurities prior to use as a target in the PVD chamber, wherein the precursor has a resistivity in the range of about 0.5 &OHgr;-cm<&rgr; <60 &OHgr;-cm; and wherein the target includes plural, rectangular tiles wherein all individual tiles are larger than 8.5 inches square.

Semiconductor devices fabricated using sputtered silicon targets

A method for forming an insulator film at a semiconductor temperature of 600&deg; C. or less comprises the steps of forming a first insulator film by oxidizing a surface of a semiconductor in an atmosphere containing oxygen atom radicals, and forming a second insulator film on the first insulator film by deposition without exposing the first insulator film to outside air.

Insulating film formation method, semiconductor device, and production apparatus

A method is provided to optimize the channel characteristics of thin film transistors (TFTs) on polysilicon films. The method is well suited to the production of TFTs for use as drivers on liquid crystal display devices. Regions of polycrystalline silicon can be formed with different predominant crystal orientations. These crystal orientations can be selected to match the desired TFT channel orientations for different areas of the device. The crystal orientations are selected by rotating a mask pattern to a different orientation for each desired crystal orientation. The mask is used in connection with lateral crystallization ELA processes to crystallize deposited amorphous silicon films.

LCD device with optimized channel characteristics

A system and method are provided to sequentially deposit a silicon dioxide base coat barrier layer adjacent a thin silicon film, to minimize the formation of water and &mdash;OH radicals. Both the base coat and thin silicon films are sputter to eliminate hydrogen chemistries. Further, the sputter processes are conducted sequentially, without breaking the vacuum seat to minimize the absorption of water in the base coat layer that conventionally occurs between deposition steps. This process eliminates the total number of process steps required, as there is no longer a need for furnace annealing the base coat before the deposition of the thin silicon film, and no longer a need for a dehydrogenation annealing step after the deposition of the thin silicon film.

System and method for forming base coat and thin film layers by sequential sputter depositing

A method is provided to optimize the channel characteristics of thin film transistors (TFTs) on polysilicon films. The method is well suited to the production of TFTs for use as drivers on liquid crystal display devices. The method is also well suited to the production of other devices using polysilicon films. Regions of polycrystalline silicon can be formed with different predominant crystal orientations. These crystal orientations can be selected to match the desired TFT channel orientations for different areas of the device. The crystal orientations are selected by selecting different mask patterns for each of the desired crystal orientation. The mask patterns are used in connection with lateral crystallization ELA processes to crystallize deposited amorphous silicon films.

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Vancouver, WA, United States of America

Yukihiko Nakata