• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1996.10b
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• pp.1360-1363
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• 1996

EPD(End Point Detection) is used to decide etching degree of layer which must be removed at wafer etching process in plasma etching process which is one of the most important process in semiconductor manufacturing. In this thesis, the method which detects malfunction of etching process in real-time will be discussed. Several EPD signal traces are collected in normal plasma etching condition and used as reference EPD signal traces. Critical points can be detected by applying differentiation and zero-crossing techniques to reference EPD signal. Mean and standard deviation of critical parameters which is memorized from reference EPD signal are calculated and these determine the lower and higher limit of control chart. And by applying statical control chart to EPD signals which are collected in real etching process malfunctions of process are detected in real-time. By means of applying this method to the real etching process we prove our method can accurately detect the malfunction of etching process and can compensate disadvantage of current industrial method.

• 제어로봇시스템학회:학술대회논문집
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• 1996.10b
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• pp.415-418
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• 1996

Etching Process, one of the most important process in semiconductor fabrication, has input control part of which components are pressure, gas flow, RF power and etc., and plasma gas which is complex and not exactly understood is used to etch wafer in etching chamber. So this process has not real-time feedback controller based on input-output relation, then it uses EPD(End Point Detection) signal to determine when to start or when to stop etching. Various type EPD controller control etching process using EPD signal obtained from optical intensity of etching chamber. In development EPD controller we concentrate on compensation of this signal intensity and setting the relative signal magnitude at first of etching. We compensate signal intensity using neural network learning method and set the relative signal magnitude using fuzzy inference method. Potential of this method which improves EPD system capability is proved by experiences.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.4 no.4
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• pp.506-516
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• 1998

In this paper, an algorithm is proposed to detect the malfunction of plasma-etching characteristics using EPD signal trajectories. EPD signal trajectories offer many information on plasma-etching process state, so they must be considered as the most important data sets to predict the wafer states in plasma-etching process. A recent work has shown that EPD signal trajectories were successfully incorporated into process modeling through critical parameter extraction, but this method consumes much effort and time. So Principal component analysis(PCA) can be applied. PCA is the linear transformation algorithm which converts correlated high-dimensional data sets to uncorrelated low-dimensional data sets. Based on this reason neural network model can improve its performance and convergence speed when it uses the features which are extracted from raw EPD signals by PCA. Wafer-state variables, Critical Dimension(CD) and uniformity can be estimated by simulation using neural network model into which EPD signals are incorporated. After CD and uniformity values are predicted, proposed algorithm determines whether malfunction values are produced or not. If malfunction values arise, the etching process is stopped immediately. As a result, through simulation, we can keep the abnormal state of etching process from propagating into the next run. All the procedures of this algorithm can be performed on-line, i.e. wafer to wafer.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society Of Semiconductor Equipment Technology
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• 2002.11a
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• pp.130-136
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• 2002

Device makers want to make higher density chips as devices shrink, especially WSix poly stack down is one of the key issues. However, EPD (End Point Detection) time delay was happened in DPS+ poly chamber which is a barrier to achieve device shrink because EPD time delay killed test pattern and next generation device. To investigate the EPD time delay, a test was done with patterned wafers. This experimental was carried out combined with OES(Optical Emission Spectroscopy) and SEM (Scanning Electron Microscopy). OES was used to find corrected wavelength in WSix stack down gate etching. SEM was used to confirm WSix gate profile and gate oxide damage. Through the experiment, a new wavelength (252nm) line of plasma is selected for DPS+ chamber to call correct EPD in WSix stack down gate etching for current device and next generation device.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.206-211
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• 2005

The device makers want to make higher density chips on the wafer through scale-down. The change of WSix/poly-Si gate film thickness is one of the key issues under 100 nm device structure. As a new device etching process is applied, end point detection(EPD) time delay was occurred in DPS+ poly chamber of Applied Materials. This is a barrier of device shrink because EPD time delay made physical damage on the surface of gate oxide. To investigate the EPD time delay, the experimental test combined with OES(Optical Emission Spectroscopy) and SEM(Scanning Electron Microscopy) was performed using patterned wafers. As a result, a EPD delay time is reduced by a new chamber seasoning and a new wavelength line through plasma scan. Applying a new wavelength of 252 nm makes it successful to call corrected EPD in WSix/poly-Si stack-down gate etching in the DPS+ poly chamber for the current and next generation devices.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.436-437
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• 2012

Double patterning technology (DPT) has been suggested as a promising candidates of the next generation lithography technology in FLASH and DRAM manufacturing in sub-40nm technology node. DPT enables to overcome the physical limitation of optical lithography, and it is expected to be continued as long as e-beam lithography takes place in manufacturing. Several different processes for DPT are currently available in practice, and they are litho-litho-etch (LLE), litho-etch-litho-etch (LELE), litho-freeze-litho-etch (LFLE), and self-aligned double patterning (SADP) [1]. The self-aligned approach is regarded as more suitable for mass production, but it requires precise control of sidewall space etch profile for the exact definition of hard mask layer. In this paper, we propose etch end point detection (EPD) in spacer etching to precisely control sidewall profile in SADP. Conventional etch EPD notify the end point after or on-set of a layer being etched is removed, but the EPD in spacer etch should land-off exactly after surface removal while the spacer is still remained. Precise control of real-time in-situ EPD may help to control the size of spacer to realize desired pattern geometry. To demonstrate the capability of spacer-etch EPD, we fabricated metal line structure on silicon dioxide layer and spacer deposition layer with silicon nitride. While blanket etch of the spacer layer takes place in inductively coupled plasma-reactive ion etching (ICP-RIE), in-situ monitoring of plasma chemistry is performed using optical emission spectroscopy (OES), and the acquired data is stored in a local computer. Through offline analysis of the acquired OES data with respect to etch gas and by-product chemistry, a representative EPD time traces signal is derived. We found that the SE-EPD is useful for precise control of spacer etching in DPT, and we are continuously developing real-time SE-EPD methodology employing cumulative sum (CUSUM) control chart [2].

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.246-255
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• 1998

This paper presents a novel method for real-time malfunction detection of plasma etching process using EPD signal traces. First, many reference EPD signal traces are collected using monochromator and data acquisition system in normal etching processes. Critical points are defined by applying differentiation and zero-crossing method to the collected reference signal traces. Critical parameters such as intensity, slope, time, peak, overshoot, etc., determined by critical points, and frame attributes transformed signal-to symbol of reference signal traces are saved. Also, UCL(Upper Control Limit) and LCL(Lower Control Limit) are obtained by mean and standard deviation of critical parameters. Then, test EPD signal traces are collected in the actual processes, and frame attributes and critical parameters are obtained using the above mentioned method. Process malfunctions are detected in real-time by applying SPC(Statistical Process Control) method to critical parameters. the Real-time malfunction detection method presented in this paper was applied to actual processes and the results indicated that it was proved to be able to supplement disadvantages of existing quality control check inspecting or testing random-selected devices and detect process malfunctions correctly in real-time.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.433-433
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• 2012

As the requirement in patterning geometry continuously shrinks down, the termination of etch process at the exact time became crucial for the success in nano patterning technology. By virtue of real-time optical emission spectroscopy (OES), etch end point detection (EPD) technique continuously develops; however, it also faced with difficulty in low open ratio etching, typically in self aligned contact (SAC) and one cylinder contact (OCS), because of very small amount of optical emission from by-product gas species in the bulk plasma glow discharge. In developing etching process, one may observe that coupon test is being performed. It consumes costs and time for preparing the patterned sample wafers every test in priority, so the coupon wafer test instead of the whole patterned wafer is beneficial for testing and developing etch process condition. We also can observe that etch open area is varied with the number of coupons on a dummy wafer. However, this can be a misleading in OES study. If the coupon wafer test are monitored using OES, we can conjecture the endpoint by experienced method, but considering by data, the materials for residual area by being etched open area are needed to consider. In this research, we compare and analysis the OES data for coupon wafer test results for monitoring about the conditions that the areas except the patterns on the coupon wafers for real-time process monitoring. In this research, we compared two cases, first one is etching the coupon wafers attached on the carrier wafer that is covered by the photoresist, and other case is etching the coupon wafers on the chuck. For comparing the emission intensity, we chose the four chemical species (SiF2, N2, CO, CN), and for comparing the etched profile, measured by scanning electron microscope (SEM). In addition, we adopted the Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) algorithm for analyzing the chose OES data patterns, and analysis the covariance and coefficient for statistical method. After the result, coupon wafers are over-etched for without carrier wafer groups, while with carrier wafer groups are under-etched. And the CN emission intensity has significant difference compare with OES raw data. Based on these results, it necessary to reasonable analysis of the OES data to adopt the pre-data processing and algorithms, and the result will influence the reliability for relation of coupon wafer test and whole wafer test.