Application of rapid thermal chemical vapor deposition (RTCVD): silicon nitride for 0.25 μm processing

As device structures shrink to 0.25 μm and beyond and the wafer diameter increases from 200 mm to 300 mm, the need to find thermal processing tools which reduce the amount of time the wafer is at process temperature, which control the wafer ambient, and which improve process uniformity is critical. The ideal tool to reduce the time at temperature and control the wafer ambient is a rapid thermal processing (RTP) system. The RTP provides capability for short times at temperature and the wafer is loaded Into the tool at ambient temperature so that interfacial oxide is controlled, However, until recently, it was not possible to achieve the thickness uniformity and low defect performance of a batch CVD (chemical vapor deposition) furnace using a commercial RTCVD system. The focus of this paper is the evaluation of the applied Materials High Temperature Films (HTF) RTCVD nitride chamber for the application of a 60 Å nitride. A 12-cassette passive data collection (PDC) test was found to result in a within-wafer uniformity of 0.50% and the wafer-to-wafer nonuniformity of 0.68%. The interfacial oxygen was controlled to less than 3.0E13 atoms/cm² as measured by Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy (SIMS),