VISWESWAREN SIVARAMAKRISHNAN, PRAVIN NARWANKAR, HELEN ARMER, PATRICIA LIU, JUN ZHAO & RAVI RAJAGOPALAN, Applied Materials, Inc., Santa Clara, CA, USA

ABSTRACT

Gigabit DRAMs will be fabricated with feature sizes <0.13 µm, with cell size equal to 0.14 µm2 and capacitor area equal to 0.051 µm2. These require alternative high k dielectric materials in place of silicon oxide and silicon nitride. The most promising high k dielectric candidate for sub-0.13 µm design rule devices is tantalum pentoxide (Ta2O5). This article discusses issues associated with implementing high k dielectric solutions, including Ta2O5 dielectric deposition, remote plasma oxidation and crystallisation of the Ta2O5, TiN top electrode formation, nitridation of polysilicon, and production worthiness issues of the process.<

A. KARAMCHETI, V.H.C. WATT, H.N. AL-SHAREEF, T.Y. LUO, G.A. BROWN, M.D. JACKSON & H.R. HUFF,
International SEMATECH, Inc., Austin, TX, USA

Silicon dioxide (SiO2) may be phased out of its role as the gate dielectric in a transistor at the sub- 100 nm technology generation. Its impending departure has brought about an unprecedented industrywide effort to identify a replacement. While it is possible that one or more of a host of new materials with a higher dielectric constant (high-K) such as Ta2O5, TiO2, BST, ZrO2, HfO2, ZrSiO4, HfSiO4, etc., may be utilised, integrating these dielectrics into a conventional CMOS process is challenging.

THOMAS EHMANN, LASZLO FABRY, JAMES MORELAND & JÜRGAN HAGE,Wacker Siltronic AG, Burghausen, Germany
MARIA SERWE, Agilent Technologies GmbH, Waldbronn, Germany

ABSTRACT

Crystalline perfection and cleanliness of silicon wafers are becoming limiting factors for increasing integration density of semiconductor devices. Both crystalline perfection and cleanliness of the wafers depend upon the cleanliness of process chemicals, process environment and process variations. Monitoring process hygiene requires sophisticated ultratrace microanalytical techniques that are capable to control process cleanliness and to assure product quality down to the lower ppt-range (pg/ml) [1,2]. As a rule of thumb, reference materials, analytical environment and analytical chemicals must be one order of magnitude cleaner than the process conditions to allow dependable analytical results on processes and products.

KENNETH W. TOBIN & THOMAS P KARNOWSKI, Oak Ridge National Laboratory1, Oak Ridge, TN, USA
FRED LAKHANI, International SEMATECH, Austin, TX, USA

As integrated circuit fabrication processes continue to increase in complexity, it has been observed that data collection, retention, and retrieval rates are continuing to increase at an alarming rate. At future technology nodes, the time required to source manufacturing problems must at least remain constant to maintain anticipated productivity. Current commercial and manufacturer in-house data management systems (DMS) have limited functionality in their ability to access, analyse, and intelligently extract information from the large variety of manufacturing data sources available within the semiconductor manufacturing site.

PETER-M. HEINZE, Macrotron Systems GmbH, München, Germany

A defect detection tool utilising multiple beams at different wavelengths has been developed and acquired a proven track record in wafer fab utilities in Japan. The history of the development and the performance of the tool is described and its advantages over the conventional defect detector discussed.