Applied Materials, Inc.

Zhiyong Wang

Jianxin Lei

Jothilingam Ramalingam

Xianmin Tang

Kirankumar Neelasandra Savandaiah

Rongjun Wang

Lei Zhou

Thanh X Nguyen

Irena H Wysok

Halbert Chong

Sundarapandian Ramalinga Vijayalakshmi Reddy

John C Forster

Keith A Miller

Tza-Jing Gung

Renu Whig

Tiefeng Shi

Rajkumar Jakkaraju

Gang Fu

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

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

Systems and methods for sputtering a layer of refractory metal layer onto a barrier layer disposed on a substrate are disclosed herein. In one or more embodiments, a method of sputter depositing a tungsten structure in an integrated circuit includes: moving a substrate into a plasma processing chamber and onto a substrate support in opposition to a sputter target assembly comprising a tungsten target having no more than ten parts per million of carbon and no more than ten parts per million of oxygen present as impurities; flowing krypton into the plasma processing chamber; and exciting the krypton into a plasma to deposit, by sputtering, a tungsten film layer on a material layer of a substrate supported by the substrate support. In some embodiments, the target assembly further includes a titanium backing plate and an aluminum bonding layer disposed between the titanium backing plate and the tungsten target.

Systems and methods for low resistivity physical vapor deposition of a tungsten film

Embodiments of the present disclosure include tungsten silicide nitride films and methods for depositing tungsten silicide nitride films. In some embodiments, a thin film microelectronic device includes a semiconductor substrate having a tungsten gate electrode stack comprising a tungsten silicide nitride film having a formula WSiN, wherein x is about 19 to about 22 atomic percent, y is about 57 to about 61 atomic percent, and z is about 15 to about 20 atomic percent. In some embodiments, a method of processing a substrate disposed in physical vapor deposition (PVD) chamber, includes: exposing a substrate having a gate insulating layer to a plasma formed from a first process gas comprising nitrogen and argon; sputtering silicon and tungsten material from a target disposed within a processing volume of the PVD chamber; depositing atop the gate insulating layer a tungsten silicide nitride layer as described above; and depositing a bulk tungsten layer atop the tungsten silicide nitride layer.

Tungsten silicide nitride films and methods of formation

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Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Zhiyong Wang