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Product Briefing Outline: ASM International has developed its ‘PowerFill’ epitaxial silicon (Epi Si) trench fill process, which enables void free filling of deep trenches with doped, epitaxial silicon. PowerFill is claimed to be about 3 times faster than competing processes, reducing manufacturing costs and creating an additional degree of freedom in power device design. Fairchild Semiconductor is the first customer to qualify the process for its advanced power management devices, having completed verification at its fab in Korea. ASM believes the new process enables power management devices and circuits to be realized in a smaller footprint thereby reducing die cost and form factor.

Problem: Requirements on discrete power MOSFETs are demanding lower on-resistance, lower gate charge and higher current capability. Increased throughput is also required to reduce manufacturing costs.

Solution: Compared to alternative processes that require multiple passes through an epitaxy reactor to realize a similar device structure, the innovative trench fill technique developed in the ASM Epsilon system enables a void free Epi process in a single deposition step. The single step process is able to triple the throughput for the epitaxial Si process, while maintaining void free filling characteristics, good uniformity and high yield.

Applications: Advanced trench Epi processing.

Platform: Epsilon Series Single-Wafer Epitaxial Reactors

Availability: January 2010 onwards.