• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.84-85
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• 2005

Dislocations are often found at Shallow Trench Isolation (STI) process after repeated thermal cycles. The residual stress after STI process often leads defect like dislocation by post STI thermo-mechanical stress. Thermo-mechanical stress induced by STI process is difficult to remove perfectly by plastic deformation at previous thermal cycles. Embedded flash memory process is very weak in terms of post STI thermo-mechanical stress, because it requires more oxidation steps than other devices. Therefore, dislocation-free flash process should be optimized.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.50 no.9
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• pp.438-443
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• 2001

In the shallow trench isolation(STI)-chemical mechanical polishing(CMP) process, the key issues are the optimized thickness control, within-wafer-non-uniformity, and the possible defects such as pad oxide damage and nitride residue. The defect like nitride residue and silicon (or pad oxide) damage after STI-CMP process were discussed to accomplish its optimum process condition. To understand its optimum process condition, overall STI related processes including reverse moat etch, trench etch, STI fill and STI-CMP were discussed. Consequently, we could conclude that law trench depth and high CMP thickness can cause nitride residue, and high trench depth and over-polishing can cause silicon damage.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 1999.05a
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• pp.501-504
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• 1999

In the shallow trench isolation(STI) chemical mechanical polishing(CMP) process, the key issues are the optimized thickness control within- wafer-non-uniformity, and the possible defects such as nitride residue and pad oxide damage. These defects after STI CMP process were discussed to accomplish its optimum process condition. To understand its optimum process condition, overall STI related processes including reverse moat etch, trench etch, STI filling and STI CMP were discussed. It is represented that the nitride residue can be occurred in the condition of high post CMP thickness and low trench depth. In addition there are remaining oxide on the moat surface after reverse moat etch. It means that reverse moat etching process can be the main source of nitride residue. Pad oxide damage can be caused by over-polishing and high trench depth.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.5-9
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• 2002

Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) has become the preferred planarization method for multilevel interconnect technology due to its ability to achieve a high degree of feature level planarity. Especially, to achieve the higher density and greater performance, shallow trench isolation (STI)-CMP process has been attracted attention for multilevel interconnection as an essential isolation technology. Also, it was possible to apply the direct STI-CMP process without reverse moat etch step using high selectivity slurry (HSS). In this work, we determined the process margin with optimized process conditions to apply HSS STI-CMP process. Then, we evaluated the reliability and reproducibility of STI-CMP process through the optimal process conditions. The wafer-to-wafer thickness variation and day-by-day reproducibility of STI-CMP process after repeatable tests were investigated. Our experimental results show, quite acceptable and reproducible CMP results with a wafer-to-wafer thickness variation within 400$\AA$.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2000.05b
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• pp.291-293
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• 2000

In 64M DRAM, sub-1/4m NMOSFETs with STI(Shallow Trench Isolation), anomalous hump phenomenon of subthreshold region, due to capped p-TEOS/SiN interlayer induced defect, is reported. The hump effect was significantly observed as channel length is reduced, which is completely different from previous reports. Channel Boron dopant redistribution due to the defect should be considered to improve hump characteristics besides consideration of STI comer shape and recess.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2010.05a
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• pp.875-876
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• 2010

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
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• 2006.10a
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• pp.77-77
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• 2006

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
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• 1999.06a
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• pp.911-913
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• 1999

Shallow Trench Isolation (STI) has become the most promising isolation scheme for ULSI applications. The stress of STI structure is one of several factors to degrade characteristics of a device. The stress contours or STI structure vary with the trench depth. Isolation characteristics of STI was analyzed as the depth of trench varied. And transistor characteristics was compared. Isolation punch-through voltage for n$^{＋}$ to pwell and p$^{＋}$ to nwell increased as trench depth increased. n$^{＋}$ to pwell leakage current had nothing to do with trench depth but n$^{＋}$ to pwell leakage current decreased as trench depth increased. In the case of transistor characteristics, short channel effect was independent on trench depth and inverse narrow width effect was greater for deeper trenches. Therefore in order to achieve stable device, it is important to minimize stress by optimizing trench depth.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.1-5
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• 2001

STI(shallow trench isolation)-CMP(chemical mechanical polishing) process have been substituted for LOCOS(local oxidation of silicon) process to obtain global planarization in the below sub-0.5㎛ technology. However TI-CMP process, especially TI-CMP with RIE(reactive ion etching) etch back process, has some kinds of defect like nitride residue, torn oxide defect, etc. In this paper, we studied how to reduced torn oxide defects after STI-CMP with RIE etch back processed. Although torn oxide defects which can occur on trench area is not deep and not severe, torn oxide defects on moat area is not deep and not severe, torn oxide defects on moat area is sometimes very deep and makes the yield loss. Thus, we did test on pattern wafers which go through trench process, APECVD process, and RIE etch back process by using an IPEC 472 polisher, IC1000/SUVA4 PAD and KOH base slurry to reduce the number of torn defects and to study what is the origin of torn oxide defects.

• KIEE International Transactions on Electrophysics and Applications
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• v.3C no.1
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• pp.28-32
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• 2003

In this paper, we have studied the in-situ end point detection (EPD) for direct chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) of shallow trench isolation (STI) structures without the reverse moat etch process. In this case, we applied a high selectivity $1n (HSS) that improves the silicon oxide removal rate and maximizes oxide to nitride selectivity Quite reproducible EPD results were obtained, and the wafer-to-wafer thickness variation was significantly reduced compared with the conventional predetermined polishing time method without EPD. Therefore, it is possible to achieve a global planarization without the complicated reverse moat etch process. As a result, the STI-CMP process can be simplified and improved using the new EPD method.