Applications of single-wafer rapid-thermal processing to the manufacture of advanced flash memory

The application of single-wafer processing in semiconductor manufacturing has long been touted as the most effective way in reducing cycle time in a production environment as well as shortening the learning cycle for process development. However, one of the bottle neck areas is in the diffusion module in which conventional furnace processes are difficult to replace due to their superior film quality and high throughput. Recently, significant progress has been made in the areas of rapid thermal oxidation (RTO) and low-pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) such that high quality films of oxide, nitride, and polysilicon were achieved with great improvement in manufacturing cycle time. In this paper, nonvolatile memory devices such as flash EPROM will be used as examples to illustrate the effective applications of RTO and single-wafer LPCVD processes.