A study on Irregular growing defect mechanism and Removal process

摘要

Main Topics of a photomask have been CD(Cntical Dimension), Overlay and Defects. In side of defects, technique suppressing growing defects which are occurring on a mask surface becomes as important as defect control method during mask manufacturing process. Conventional growing defects arise out of combination of sulfuric ion on a mask surface and environmental facts such as pellicle ingredient, humidity and etc. So Mask cleaning process was driven to reduce sulfuric acid on a mask surface which source of growing defects. And actually various cleaning process has been developed through the elimination of sulfuric acid such as DI, O3 cleaning. Normally Conventional growing defects are removed using DI, SCI or SPM cleaning according to incidence. But recently irregular growing defects are occurred which are completely distinct from conventional growing defects. Interestingly, irregular growing defects are distributed differently from conventional on a mask. They spread in isolated space patterns and reduce the transmittance so that space pattern size continuously decreased. It causes Wafer Yield loss. Furthermore, irregular growing defects are not fully removed by cleaning which is traditional removal process. In this study, we provide difference between conventional and irregular growing defects based on its characteristic and distributed formation. In addition, we present and discuss removal and control technique about irregular growing defects. For elemental analysis and study, diverse analysis tool was applied such as TEM for checking Cross-Section, AFM for checking the roughness of surface, ED AX, AES, 1C for analyzing remained ions and particles on the mask and AIMS.