초록
Optical emission spectroscopy is used to identify chemical species and monitor the changes of process results during the plasma process. However, plasma process monitoring or fault detection by using emission signal variation monitoring is vulnerable to background signal fluctuations. IR heaters are used in semiconductor manufacturing chambers where high temperature uniformity and fast response are required. During the process, the IR lamp output fluctuates to maintain a stable process temperature. This IR signal fluctuation reacts as a background signal fluctuation to the spectrometer. In this research, we evaluate the effect of infrared background signal fluctuation on plasma process monitoring and improve the plasma process monitoring accuracy by using simple infrared background signal subtraction method. The effect of infrared background signal fluctuation on plasma process monitoring was evaluated on $SiO_2$ PECVD process. Comparing the $SiO_2$ film thickness and the measured emission line intensity from the by-product molecules, the effect of infrared background signal on plasma process monitoring and the necessity of background signal subtraction method were confirmed.