Laser removal of foreign materials from semiconductor wafers

摘要

Removal of foreign materials formed during VLSI/ULSI processing, is one of the challenges of advanced semiconductor technology. As device geometries continue to shrink, microcontaminants such as particles, metallic contaminants, photoresists and other organic residues have an increasing impact on yield. As wafer processing becomes more aggressive and contaminants which are yield limiting become much smaller, traditional cleaning techniques based on wet-chemistry cleaning become less adequate. Only a completely dry cleaning process can overcome all the drawbacks associated with the problematic wet chemistry cleaning. A novel DUV-Excimer laser Dry removal method allows the elimination of these contaminants, in a single step process.