• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
• /
• 2001.11b
• /
• pp.189-192
• /
• 2001

Recently, STI process is getting attention as a necessary technology for making high density of semiconductor by devices isolation method. However, it does have various problems caused by CMP nprocess, such as torn oxide defects, nitride residues on oxide, damages of si active region, contaminations due to post-CMP cleaning, difficulty of accurate end point detection in CMP process, etc. In this work, the various defects induced by CMP process was introduced and the above mentioned problems of CMP process was examined in detail. Finally, the guideline of future CMP process was presented to reduce the effects of these defects.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
• /
• 2001.11a
• /
• pp.189-192
• /
• 2001

Recently, STI process is getting attention as a necessary technology for making high density of semiconductor by devices isolation method. However, it does have various problems caused by CMP process, such as torn oxide defects, nitride residues on oxide, damages of si active region, contaminations due to post-CMP cleaning, difficulty of accurate end point detection in CMP process, etc. In this work, the various defects induced by CMP process was introduced and the above mentioned Problems of CMP process was examined in detail. Finally, the guideline of future CMP process was presented to reduce the effects of these defects.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
• /
• 2008.06a
• /
• pp.118-118
• /
• 2008

The oxide CMP has been applied to interlayer dielectric(ILD) and shallow trench isolation (STI) in chip fabrication. Recently the slurry used in oxide CMP being changed from silica slurry to ceria (cerium dioxide) slurry particularly in STI CMP, because the material selectivity of ceria slurry is better than material selectivity of silica slurry. Moreover, the ceria slurry has good a planarization efficiency, compared with silica slurry. However ceria abrasives make a material removal rate too high at the region of wafer center. Then we focuses on why profile of material removal rate is convex. The material removal rate sharply increased to 3216 $\AA$/min by $4^{th}$ run without conditioning. After $4^{th}$ run, material removal rate converged. Furthermore, profile became more convex during 12 run. And average material removal rate decreased when conditioning process is added to end of CMP process. This is due to polishing mechanism of ceria. Then the ceria abrasive remains at the pad, in particular remains more at wafer center contacted region of pad. The field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) images showed that the pad sample in the wafer center region has a more ceria abrasive than in wafer outer region. The energy dispersive X-ray spectrometer (EDX) verified the result that ceria abrasive is deposited and more at the region of wafer center. Therefore, this result may be expected as ceria abrasives on pad surface causing the convex profile of material removal rate.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
• /
• v.10 no.6
• /
• pp.189-192
• /
• 2009

The leakage current in a CMOS image sensor (CIS) can have various origins. Leakage current investigations have focused on such things as cobalt-salicide, source and drain scheme, and shallow trench isolation (STI) profile. However, there have been few papers examining the effects on leakage current of nitride stringers that are formed by gate sidewall etching. So this study reports the results of a series of experiments on the effects of a nitride stringer on real display images. Different step heights were fabricated during a STI chemical mechanical polishing process to form different nitride stringer sizes, arsenic and boron were implanted in each fabricated photodiode, and the doping density profiles were analyzed. Electrons that moved onto the silicon surface caused the dark leakage current, which in turn brought up the speckle defect on the display image in the CIS.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
• /
• 2001.11a
• /
• pp.185-188
• /
• 2001

Chemical mechanical polishing(CMP) process is widely used for global planarization of inter-metal dielectric (IMD) layer and inter-layer dielectric (ILD) for deep sub-micron technology. However, as the IMD and ILD layer gets thinner, defects such as micro-scratch lead to severe circuit failure, which affect yield. In this paper, for the improvement of CMP Process, deionized water (DIW) pressure, purified $N_2$ (P$N_2$) gas, slurry filter and high spray bar were installed. Our experimental results show that DIW pressure and P$N_2$ gas factors were not related with removal rate, but edge hot-spot of patterned wafer had a serious relation. Also, the filter installation in CMP polisher could reduce defects after CMP process, it is shown that slurry filter plays an important role in determining consumable pad lifetime. The filter lifetime is dominated by the defects. However, the slurry filter is impossible to prevent defect-causing particles perfectly. Thus, we suggest that it is necessary to install the high spray bar of de-ionized water (DIW) with high pressure, to overcome the weak-point of slurry filter. Finally, we could expect the improvements of throughput, yield and stability in the ULSI fabrication process.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
• /
• 2004.07a
• /
• pp.239-242
• /
• 2004

We investigated the nanotopography impact on the post-chemical mechanical polishing (post-CMP) oxide thickness deviation(OTD) of ceria slurry with a surfactant. Not only the surfactant but also the slurry abrasive size influenced the nanotopography impact. The magnitude of the post-CMP OTD increased with adding the surfactant in the case of smaller abrasives, but it did not increase in the case of larger abrasives, while the magnitudes of the nanotopography heights are all similar. We created a one-dimensional numercal simulation of the nanotopography impact by taking account of the non-Prestonian behavior of the slurry, and good agreement with experiment results was obtained.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
• /
• 2004.07a
• /
• pp.421-424
• /
• 2004

As the deep sub-micron devices are recently integrated high package density, novel process method for sub $0.1{\mu}m$ devices is required to get the superior thin gate oxide characteristics and reliability. However, few have reported on the electrical quality and reliability on the thin gate oxide. In this paper I will recommand a novel shallow trench isolation structure for thin gate oxide $30{\AA}$ of deep sub-micron devices. Different from using normal LOCOS technology, novel shallow trench isolation have a unique 'inverse narrow channel effects' when the channel width of the devices is scaled down shallow trench isolation has less encroachment into the active device area. Based on the research, I could confirm the successful fabrication of shallow trench isolation(STI) structure by the SEM, in addition to thermally stable silicide process was achiever. I also obtained the decrease threshold voltage value of the channel edge and the contact resistance of $13.2[\Omega/cont.]$ at $0.3{\times}0.3{\mu}m^2$. The reliability was measured from dielectric breakdown time, shallow trench isolation structure had tile stable value of $25[%]{\sim}90[%]$ more than 55[sec].

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
• /
• 2006.06a
• /
• pp.561-562
• /
• 2006

The purpose of this study was to investigate the root cause of adhesion of silica and ceria particles during Poly-Si, TEOS, and SiN CMP process, respectively. The zeta-potentials of abrasive particles and wafers were observed negative surface charges in the alkaline solutions. SAC and STI patterned wafers have intermediate values of their composition surface's zeta potentials. The theoretical interaction force and adhesion force of silica and ceria particle were calculated in solution with acidic, neutral and alkaline pH. A stronger attractive force was calculated for silica and ceria particles on wafers in acidic solutions than in alkaline solutions. The theoretical interaction forces of the SAC and STI patterned wafers have intermediate values of their constitution wafer's values. The adhesion forces is observed lower values in alkaline solutions than in acidic solutions. And the ceria particle has lower adhesion than that of the silica particle.

• Proceedings of the Materials Research Society of Korea Conference
• /
• 2003.11a
• /
• pp.63-63
• /
• 2003

The nanotopography of silicon wafers has emerged as an important factor in the STI process since it affects the post-CMP thickness deviation (OTD) of dielectric films. Ceria slurry with surfactant is widely applied to STI-CMP as it offers high oxide-to-nitride removal selectivity. Aiming to control the nanotopography impact through ceria slurry characteristics, we examhed the effect of surfactant concentration and abrasive size on the nanotopography impact. The ceria slurries for this study were produced with cerium carbonate as the starting material. Four kinds of slurry with different size of abrasives were prepared through a mechanical treatment The averaged abrasive size for each slurry varied from 70 nm to 290 nm. An anionic organic surfactant was added with the concentration from 0 to 0.8 wt %. We prepared commercial 8 inch silicon wafers. Oxide Shu were deposited using the plasma-enhanced tetra-ethyl-ortho-silicate (PETEOS) method, The films on wafers were polished on a Strasbaugh 6EC. Film thickness before and after CMP was measured with a spectroscopic ellipsometer, ES4G (SOPRA). The nanotopogrphy height of the wafer was measured with an optical interferometer, NanoMapper (ADE Phase Shift)

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
• /
• 2001.11b
• /
• pp.185-188
• /
• 2001

Chemical mechanical polishing(CMP) process is widely used for global planarization of inter-metal dielectric (IMD) layer and inter-layer dielectric (ILD) for deep sub-micron technology. However, as the IMD and ILD layer gets thinner, defects such as micro-scratch lead to severe circuit failure, which affect yield. In this paper, for the improvement of CMP process, deionized water (DIW) pressure, purified $N_2 \; (PN_2)$ gas, slurry filter and high spray bar were installed. Our experimental results show that DIW pressure and $PN_2$ gas factors were not related with removal rate, but edge hot-spot of patterned wafer had a serious relation. Also, the filter installation in CMP polisher could reduce defects after CMP process, it is shown that slurry filter plays an important role in determining consumable pad lifetime. The filter lifetime is dominated by the defects. However, the slurry filter is impossible to prevent defect-causing particles perfectly. Thus, we suggest that it is necessary to install the high spray bar of de-ionized water (DIW) with high pressure, to overcome the weak-point of slurry filter. Finally, we could expect the improvements of throughput, yield and stability in the ULSI fabrication process.