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:
Aug. 18, 2009
Filed:
Aug. 23, 2006
Hairong Tang, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Xiaoye Zhao, Mountain View, CA (US);
Keiji Horioka, Tokyo, JP;
Jeremiah T. P. Pender, San Jose, CA (US);
Hairong Tang, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Xiaoye Zhao, Mountain View, CA (US);
Keiji Horioka, Tokyo, JP;
Jeremiah T. P. Pender, San Jose, CA (US);
Applied Materials, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
A chamber dry cleaning process particularly useful after a dielectric plasma etch process which exposes an underlying copper metallization. After the dielectric etch process, the production wafer is removed from the chamber and a cleaning gas is excited into a plasma to clean the chamber walls and recover the dielectric etching characteristic of the chamber. Preferably, the cleaning gas is reducing such as hydrogen gas with the addition of nitrogen gas. Alternatively, the cleaning gas may an oxidizing gas. If the wafer pedestal is vacant during the cleaning, it is not electrically biased. If a dummy wafer is placed on the pedestal during cleaning, the pedestal is biased. The cleaning process is advantageously performed every wafer cycle.