Abstract: Future semiconductor manufacture includes challengingrequirements to maintain film interface quality andminimize contamination. In addition, there will be adrive to reduce costs by reducing the number ofoperational steps or by increasing throughput.Processes driven by yield considerations are metalstacks, poly-metal dielectric (cluster tools existtoday) and, in the future perhaps, gate stocks, polyemitters, and salicide contacts. Processes driven toreduce operational expenses are those that are usedmany times, such as lithocells (track and exposuretools) and, perhaps, metrology cells. This paperreviews the status and process intent of typicalcluster tools and their architectures. It addressesmany of the issues that exist and provides a theme thatmuch learning is required to achieve a substantialcluster tool environment in a future factoryenvironment.!22
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