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S. RAOUX, Applied Materials, Santa Clara, CA, USA
J. G. LANGAN, Air Products and Chemicals, Allentown, PA, USA

ABSTRACT

As part of a program to reduce emissions of global warming gases from semiconductor production equipment, a major advance in dielectric CVD (chemical vapour deposition) chamber cleaning is available that virtually eliminates perfluorocompounds (PFC) emissions from the process. Using NF3 gas in a remote microwave plasma source, the near-total dissociation of the gas achieves both superior chamber cleaning performance and improved environmental friendliness. NF3 has been shown to be safe and of relatively low toxicity when used according to accepted handling procedures. The remote microwave clean technology also enables higher productivity and improved economic performance of the CVD process, including higher throughput and lower cost of consumables.