Applied Materials, Inc.

Zubin Huang

Rui Cheng

Diwakar N Kedlaya

Karthik Janakiraman

Jallepally Ravi

Krishna Nittala

Sandesh Yadamane

Srinivas Tokur Mohana

Jian Li

Simon Yavelberg

Kai Wu

Manjunatha P Koppa

Yi Yang

Ramesh Gopalan

Srinivas Guggilla

Aykut Aydin

Shreyas Patil Shanthaveeraswamy

Harpreet Singh

Meenakshi Gupta

Venkata Sharat Chandra Parimi

Gene S Lee

Satish Radhakrishnan

Yung-chen Lin

Badri N Ramamurthi

Fang Ruan

Venkatanarayana Shankaramurthy

Hidetaka Oshio

Anton Baryshnikov

Truong Van Nguyen

Peiqi Wang

Chao Li

Tzu-shun Yang

Juan Carlos Rocha-Alvarez

Shashank Sharma

Ganesh Balasubramanian

Deenesh Padhi

Kelvin Chan

Kwangduk Douglas Lee

Paul Brillhart

Prashant Kumar Kulshreshtha

Martin Jay Seamons

Xiaoxiong Yuan

Vinay K Prabhakar

Umesh M Kelkar

Sarah Michelle Bobek

Hang Yu

Michael Sterling Jackson

Sanjay G Kamath

Juan Carlos Rocha

Cheng-Hsiung Matthew Tsai

Kaushik Comandoor Alayavalli

Jiang Lu

Nitin Pathak

Sumit Agarwal

Gangadhar Sheelavant

Hanish Kumar Panavalappil Kumarankutty

Tomoharu Matsushita

Chuanxi Yang

Byung Seok Kwon

Chen-an Chen

Rajaram Narayanan

Gautam K Hemani

Jonathan Robert Bakke

David Santi

Euhngi Lee

Vidyadharan Srinivasa Murthy Bangalore

Stephen A Wells

Sarah Langlois White

Prashant A Desai

Brett Spaulding

Alicia J Lustgraaf

Mohammed Jaheer Sherfudeen

Xiaozhou Yu

Manjunath Veerappa Chobari Patil

Zhixiu Liang

Honggun Kim

A method and apparatus for processing a substrate are described herein. The methods and apparatus described enable the raising and lowering of a shadow ring within a process chamber either simultaneously with or separately from a plurality of substrate lift pins. The shadow ring is raised and lowered using a shadow ring lift assembly and may be raised to a pre-determined height above the substrate during a radical treatment operation. The shadow ring lift assembly may also raise and lower the plurality of substrate lift pins to enable both the shadow ring and the substrate lift pins to be raised to a transfer position when the substrate is being transferred into or out of the process chamber.

Shadow ring lift to improve wafer edge performance

Capacitor devices containing silicon boron nitride with high boron concentration are provided. In one or more examples, a capacitor device is provided and contains a stopper layer containing silicon boron nitride and disposed on a substrate, a dielectric layer disposed on the stopper layer, vias formed within the dielectric layer and the stopper layer, metal contacts disposed on bottoms of the vias, a nitride barrier layer containing a metal nitride material and disposed on walls of the vias and disposed on the metal contacts, and an oxide layer disposed within the vias on the nitride barrier layer, wherein the oxide layer contains one or more holes or voids formed therein. The silicon boron nitride contains about 18 atomic percent (at %) to about 50 at % of boron.

PECVD of SiBN thin films with low leakage current

Exemplary temperature modulation methods may include delivering a gas through a purge line extending within a substrate support. The gas may be directed to a backside surface of the substrate support opposite a substrate support surface. The purge line may extend along a central axis of a shaft, the shaft being hermetically sealed with the substrate support. The substrate support may be characterized by a center and a circumferential edge. A first end of the purge line may be fixed at a first distance from the backside surface of the substrate support. The methods may include flowing the gas at a first flow rate via a flow pathway to remove heat from the substrate support to achieve a desired substrate support temperature profile.

Systems and methods for substrate support temperature control

Method for depositing amorphous silicon materials are provide and include generating a plasma within a plasma unit in fluid communication with a process chamber and flowing the plasma through an ion suppressor to produce an activated fluid containing reactive species and neutral species. The activated fluid either contains no ions or contains a lower concentration of ions than the plasma. The method further includes flowing the activated fluid into a first inlet of a dual channel showerhead within the process chamber and flowing a silicon precursor into a second inlet of the dual channel showerhead. Thereafter, the method includes flowing a mixture of the activated fluid and the silicon precursor out of the dual channel showerhead and forming an amorphous silicon layer on a substrate disposed in the process chamber.

Remote capacitively coupled plasma deposition of amorphous silicon

Embodiments of the disclosure provided herein generally relate to a bottom cover plate (BCP) that enables control of radiation loss from a heating element inside a chamber for processing a substrate. The heating element is used to heat the substrate before or during processing and may heat the substrate unevenly due to uneven heat losses within the chamber. For example, the uneven heating of the substrate may result in uneven deposition of a material on the substrate, which may result in excess processing to correct the deposition or wasted product from disposing of improperly processed substrates. The BCP may be used to correct the uneven heating of the substrate.

Bottom cover plate to reduce wafer planar nonuniformity

Substrate support for a substrate processing chamber

Exemplary semiconductor processing chambers include a chamber body defining a processing region. The chambers may include a substrate support disposed within the processing region. The substrate support may have an upper surface that defines a recessed substrate seat. The chambers may include a shadow ring disposed above the substrate seat and the upper surface. The shadow ring may extend about a peripheral edge of the substrate seat. The chambers may include bevel purge openings defined within the substrate support proximate the peripheral edge. A bottom surface of the shadow ring may be spaced apart from a top surface of the upper surface to form a purge gas flow path that extends from the bevel purge openings along the shadow ring. A space formed between the shadow ring and the substrate seat may define a process gas flow path. The gas flow paths may be in fluid communication with one another.

Methods to eliminate of deposition on wafer bevel and backside

Embodiments of the present technology include semiconductor processing methods to make boron-and-silicon-containing layers that have a changing atomic ratio of boron-to-silicon. The methods may include flowing a silicon-containing precursor into a substrate processing region of a semiconductor processing chamber, and also flowing a boron-containing precursor and molecular hydrogen (H) into the substrate processing region of the semiconductor processing chamber. The boron-containing precursor and the Hmay be flowed at a boron-to-hydrogen flow rate ratio. The flow rate of the boron-containing precursor and the Hmay be increased while the boron-to-hydrogen flow rate ratio remains constant during the flow rate increase. The boron-and-silicon-containing layer may be deposited on a substrate, and may be characterized by a continuously increasing ratio of boron-to-silicon from a first surface in contact with the substrate to a second surface of the boron-and-silicon-containing layer furthest from the substrate.

Boron concentration tunability in boron-silicon films

Exemplary methods of semiconductor processing may include coupling a fluid conduit within a substrate support in a semiconductor processing chamber to a system foreline. The coupling may vacuum chuck a substrate with the substrate support. The methods may include flowing a gas into the fluid conduit. The methods may include maintaining a pressure between the substrate and the substrate support at a pressure higher than the pressure at the system foreline.

In one aspect, an apparatus includes a chamber body, a blocker plate for delivering process gases into a gas mixing volume, and a face plate having holes through which the mixed gas is distributed to a substrate. In another aspect, the face plate may include a first region with a recess relative to a second region. In another aspect, the blocker plate may include a plurality of regions, each region having different hole patterns/geometries and/or flow profiles. In another aspect, the apparatus may include a radiation shield disposed below a bottom of the substrate support. A shaft or stem of the substrate support includes holes at an upper end thereof near the substrate support.

Apparatus and methods for improving thermal chemical vapor deposition (CVD) uniformity

A method of forming a tungsten-containing layer over a substrate includes a) positioning a substrate on a substrate support in a process volume of a process chamber; b) providing a precursor gas to the process volume of the process chamber for a first duration; and c) providing a tungsten-containing gas to the process volume of the process chamber by opening a pulsing valve on a tungsten-containing gas delivery line for a second duration occurring after the first duration to form a tungsten-containing layer on the substrate. The tungsten-containing gas delivery line includes a first section connected to an inlet of the pulsing valve and a second section connected to an outlet of the pulsing valve, the first section connects the inlet of the pulsing valve to a reservoir of tungsten-containing gas, the second section connects the outlet of the pulsing valve to an inlet of the process chamber.

Gas delivery for tungsten-containing layer

Shadow ring lift pin

Embodiments of the present disclosure generally relate to a pedestal for increasing temperature uniformity in a substrate supported thereon. The pedestal comprises a body having a heater embedded therein. The body comprises a patterned surface that includes a first region having a first plurality of posts extending from a base surface of the body at a first height, and a second region surrounding the central region having a second plurality of posts extending from the base surface at a second height that is greater than the first height, wherein an upper surface of each of the first plurality of posts and the second plurality of posts are substantially coplanar and define a substrate receiving surface.

Heated pedestal design for improved heat transfer and temperature uniformity

Growing community of inventors

Santa Clara, CA, United States of America

Zubin Huang