The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Feb. 06, 2001
Filed:
Aug. 26, 1997
Li-Chih Chao, Taoyuan, TW;
Yuan-Chang Huang, Miao Li, TW;
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd., Hsinchu, TW;
Abstract
The present invention provides a method for monitoring a self-aligned contact (SAC) etching process. A wafer with an oxide layer serves as an oxide control wafer. The oxide layer is formed on the substrate. The oxide control wafer and a SAC wafer with SAC structure are simultaneously treated with a SAC etching process in an etching chamber with the same etching recipe. A contact hole is formed by etching the oxide layer of the oxide control wafer after the SAC etching process. The depth of a profile transition point and the depth of etching stop for the oxide control wafer can be observed by cross-section SEM. The profile transition depth in the oxide control wafer corresponds to the etching thickness of S,N corner loss in the SAC wafer. Therefore, the profile transition depth and the depth of etching stop in the oxide control wafer can be used to monitor the etching chamber condition.