Processes for Micro Fabrication

Manufacturing Choices MEMS Materials Clean Room Wafer Cleaning Technology Oxidation Lithography Thin Film Etching Bulk Micromachining Surface Micromachining Thin Film Deposition Thin Film Doping Metallization

MEMS Terminology

Manufacturing Choices I

*Fund. uFab., M. Madou, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, USA, 2002

Manufacturing Choices II

*Fund. uFab., M. Madou, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, USA, 2002

Substrate Choices

*Fund. uFab., M. Madou, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, USA, 2002

Silicon Substrate

*Fund. uFab., M. Madou, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, USA, 2002

MEMS Materials

IC: Al, Si, SOI, SiO2, Si3N4, Cr, Cu, poly-Si Mechanical: Si, SOI, ZnO, AlN, poly-Si Bio: enzymes, liposomes, DNA, polyimides, antigen/antibody pairs, hydrogels, glass, porous Si, Pt, Ag, AgCl RF: Si, GaAs, polyimide, Cu High Temp: Al2O3, Pt, ZrO2, TiO2, SiC
*Fund. uFab., M. Madou, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, USA, 2002

Material Properties

*K.E. Peterson, Silicon as a Mech. Mat., Proc. IEEE ,v. 70.5, May 1982

Si for MEMS
No plastic deformation or creep <800 C E = 190 Gpa (SS:200) Yield Strn >2800 Mpa (35/Al, 1400 Steel) Knoop Hrd > Steel Low T exp. coeff. High thermal cond. Piezoresist >10X Metal Rounded wafer edge, flatness, ref. flats Types: , poly, Xtal Etch chemistry Backside damage CMOS compatible, hybrid circuits Miniaturization

Wafer Specifications

*Fund. uFab., M. Madou, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, USA, 2002

Cleanroom Requirements
Airborne particulate cleanliness classes per US standards
Naturally Yield is the dictating factor for level of cleanliness

It costs around US $1 Billion to build a commercial fab today Critical particle size 0.12 m(4MB DRAM) to 0.03 m (256 MB DRAM) Critical Defect Density 0.28D/cm2 to 0.004D/cm2

Pre-furnace Si wafer cleaning

Deionized water
Resistivity: >18.2 Mohms-cm (Sub-micron process) Particle (0.05 m size): <1/cc Less than 0.01 ppb Cl, Na, Metal ions etc. Chemicals -Special MOS Grade

Sources of contamination Particles: Equipment, ambient, gas, DI water, chemicals,CMP Metal: Equipment, chemical, RIE, Implantation ashing Organic: Vapor in room, residue of photoresist, storage containers, chemicals Microroughness: Initial wafer material, chemical Native Oxide: Ambient moisture, DI water rinse

Wet Cleaning Technology- Industry Standard

Pre-furnace cleaning: A very important and critical step: Common Wet cleaning procedure used is the RCA Wet Cleaning Process or its slightly modified form. Wet Cleaning process should remove:Particles, Metal contamination, Organic contamination, reduce microroughness, and remove native oxide.

Wet Cleaning
H2SO4:H2O2 composition 3:1 to 4:1 at 90oC for particle removal NH4OH+H2O2+H2O Standard Cleaning-1 (SC-1) Step: composition 1:1:5 to 1:2:7 at 70-80oC :Removes organic contamination and particles by oxidation HCl+H2O2+H2O Standard Cleaning-2 (SC-2) Step: composition 1:1:6 to 1:2:8 at 70-80oC, Desorbs metal contamination by forming a soluble complex Buffered HF dip after each of the above processes => Industry is looking for efficient dry cleaning technologies (Wet cleaning: drying difficulties, incompatibility with other processes, cost, chemical waste disposal, general inflexibility) Ultraviolet Ozone clean, HF/H2O vapor clean, Ar/H2 Plasma cleaning etc. => Atomically flat surfaces to meet future ULSI Industry requirements

Comparison: Wet Vs Dry Cleaning

Oxidation
Si + O2 = SiO2 Thermal Oxidation of Si at temperatures above 800oC in Dry O2

SiO2

TEM picture Furnace Oxidation

Rapid Thermal Oxidation CVD oxides High-Pressure Oxidation Steam grown Oxides Pyrogenic Oxidation OXYNITRIDES

Lithography Methods

Photoresist

Polymer that can create patterns by the use of solvents after irradiation Negative PhotoResists (NPR): on exposure to light become less soluble - chemically inert polyisoprene rubber-exposed resist has low molecular weight, so it swells as the unexposed part is dissolved in developer solvent. The swelling distorts the pattern features. Resolution limit of 2 m. Advantages include resistance to etching and good adhesion to the substrate. Positive PhotoResists (PPR): on exposure to light become more soluble-a resin and a photoactive compound dissolved in solvent-unexposed regions have high molecular weight so do not swell much in the developer solution: useful for ULSI. Development of resists for shorter wavelengths (Deep UV)/higher resolution - PMMA

Optical Lithography
Light Sources: High-Pressure Arc Lamps Laser Sources Deep Ultraviolet, 100-300 nm Mid-UV, 300-360 nm Near UV, 360-450 nm
Three Most Important Requirements for any Lithography System: (a) Minimum Resolution (b) Dimensional Control (c) Alignment

Light Sources-High Pressure Arc Lamps

G-line is widely used for >0.8 m feature sizes I-line is used for sizes in the range 0.4-0.8 m For below 0.4 m, DUV (248 nm) with a sensitive DUV resist is used or I-line exposure with a phase shifting mask
Resolution: K1 / NA2, DOF = K2/(NA)2 where, K1 and K2 are factors controlled by photoresist, optical system, and the numerical aperture of the lens.

Light Sources-Lasers
The most commonly used laser sources for deep UV Photolithography are Excimer Lasers The high power available from excimer lasers allow shorter exposure times (10-20 ns) (increases throughput)

The future of optical lithography

Exposure Techniques
Contact, Proximity and Projection Printing

Electron-Beam Lithography
Exposure by use of accelerated electrons rather than photons-Direct write technique. Electrons, like photons, have particle and wave properties; when accelerated, they acquire a wavelength : where is in nm and V is the accelerating voltage in V. For a 10 keV acceleration, wavelength is 0.0123 nm !! Excellent resolutions down to sub 100 nm. Resolution limited by electron scattering in the target materials including the resist. Throughput is much lower compared to optical systems-serial writing Electron-Beam Exposure Systems Direct Writing
(More common)

Projection Printing

X-Ray Lithography
IC mfg. < 200nm and LIGA (x-ray lith+ galvanoformung+ abformtechnik When soft X-rays are used diffraction effects are negligible down to 100 nm. Since X-rays pass through many solid materials - including dust- the clean room needed for chip fabrication can be much less severe than the conventional case. Masks for X-rays are more difficult to construct and repair, because of the lack of suitable materials. Requirements on Mask: The mask can no longer be made on quartz since the thick plate would absorb the soft X-rays. Need for thin membranes as the transparent substrate. Limits both the durability and dimensional stability. Only when the mask substrate and absorber materials are very different from each other will high contrast printing be possible.

X-ray Exposure Systems

PMMA (polymethyl metacrylate) is successfully used as a resist.

Proximity Printing is the most practical method for using soft X-rays in microlithography.

Principle of a conventional X-ray exposure system

Thin Film Etch Techniques

Dry (anisotropic/plasma) Versus Wet (isotropic) Chemical Etching

Most common Dry Etch Methods: Plasma Etching and Reactive Ion Etching (RIE) Plasma is an ionized gas-created by applying the RF power across two electrodes to the low pressure gas volume

Plasma Etch Mechanisms

Etch rate, selectivity, uniformity, directionality, surface quality, and reproducibility Isotropic Etching - chemical reactions between the material to be etched and the chemically active species in the gas plasma Anisotropic Etching - Due to the electric field in the vertical direction to the wafer surface, active species having electrical charges are supplied much more onto the lateral surface than onto the vertical one. - The physical sputtering by ions enhances the chemical reactions on the lateral surface.

Shift in the etched Pattern size

Reactive Ion Etching

Ion bombardment increases the reaction rate Improved Anisotropic etching- Horizontal surfaces in RIE process are in the line-of-sight for both energetic ions and chemical species, while sidewalls are exposed only to chemical species. Sidewall Passivation in RIE

Energy of Ar+ ions is 450 eV

Bulk Micromachining- Si Lattice

Silicon Lattice II

Anisotropic Etching

Isotropic Etching

Surface Micromachining
Comparison w/ CMOS Materials/Processes Process flow- ASIC Vertical dimension 1-5 um (1 um) Lateral dimension 210um (1 um) Complexity 2-6 (10) Critical process T: 450: LTO 610: Low Stress Poly 650: Doped Poly 800: Nitride 950: PSG densify 1050: Poly stress anneal Jn. migr./Al interconnect

Thin Film Deposition

Deposited dielectrics are used extensively in IC technologies for Isolation, Mask,

Passivation layers, and intermetal dielectrics . Also useful for low-thermal budget gate oxides. Polysilicon Films are used as Conducting layer, Semiconductor, Resistors after proper doping, Gate material in MOS technologies, Thin Film Transistors for Display applications.

LPCVD and PECVD

Dielectric Deposition Methods

Oxide Deposition: (i) 500oC, silane and oxygen: SiH4(g) + O2 (g) SiO2(s) + 2H2 (g) (ii) Decomposing vaporized Tetraethylorthosilicate (TEOS) at 650-750oC Si(OC2H5)4 (l) SiO2(s) + by-products (g) Step Coverage

Uniform coverage resulting Nonconformal step coverage from rapid surface migration for long mean free path and no surface migration BPSG-addition of Boron and phosphorous to oxide helps the oxide soften and flow during subsequent heating

Oxynitrides by CVD

LPCVD Polysilicon Films

SiH4(g), SiH2Cl2 (g) decomposition: Dep. Temp.: 575-650oC, ~10 nm/min rate, Pressure: 0.2-1 Torr Compatibility with subsequent high temperature processing, excellent interface with thermal oxides, its ability to be deposited conformally over steep topography, its capability of reacting with overlaying metal to form silicide structures. Salicide structures - Tungsten, Tantalum or Titanium silicides-reduced resistivity Doping of polysilicon: implantation, diffusion, or in-situ doping Piezoresistor for MEMS; Dual gate CMOS Technologies- p+ poly for p-MOSFETs, n+ -poly for n-channel MOSFETs

Ion Implantation and Diffusion Processes

Ion implantation is a process by which ionized atoms are accelerated into a semiconductor substrate through high electric field. The range and the profile depend on ion energy and substrate material. It is the exclusive process for introducing impurities in current day ULSI technologies. Leaves no residual source material. Implantation through masking materials such as polysilicon, oxide, nitride, or photoresist.
No anneal

Activation through a high

temperature anneal(normally RTP)-impurities move to substitutional sites and become electrically active. Also lattice damage is removed.

Ion-Implantation and Drive-in

Thermal Annealing
Dopants are introduced by Ion Implantation, Gaseous sources, Solid sources, or Crystal growth. Diffusion of these dopants needs to be tightly controlled which imposes a limit on thermal budget of processing.

Rapid Thermal Processes (RTP)

Oxides and Nitrides, Polysilicon, Dopant activation, Defect annealing, RTA of silicides.

(b)Batch furnace

Metallization
Process that connects individual devices to form circuits Physical Vapor Deposition and Chemical Vapor Deposition Physical Vapor Deposition- Sputtering and E-beam evaporation Sputtering is widely used in modern ULSI Reasons being: (1) high deposition rate (2) capability to deposit and maintain complex alloy compositions (3) capability to deposit refractory metals, (4) Uniform deposition over 200 mm diameter wafer, (5) step coverage and contact hole filling, (5) the capability, in multi-chamber systems, to clean the contact before depositing metal.
Basic Sputter System

or RF power

=> Electromigration resistance: Cu is alloyed to Al Film properties, step coverage, directional enhancement need to be optimized.

Metal Patterning

Subtractive Etch

Lift-Off

Deposit sequentially aluminum alloy, use the same film to fill contacts and define interconnects. Lift-off avoids metal etch, increasing the pattern flexibility, but has limited extendibility for sub 0.5 m feature sizes.

MEMS Manufacturing Requirements

MEMS R&D @ IITB BioMEMS- NPSM project/2.6 Cr Microheater for 2phase heat transfer simulation studies- BRNS (25 Lac) Micro/Nanochannels for DNA transportDST/MHRD (30 Lac) Invivo pressure sensor- Consultancy project

Silicon Material Properties @ 300K

*Fund. uFab., M. Madou, CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, USA, 2002

Lithography

Important Steps in Lithography

Contact and Proximity Printing

Limitations of contact printing: reduced mask life, high defect density in the printed pattern, introduction of defects in the resist and mask Proximity printing- a small gap between mask and resist-eliminates defects since there is no direct contact-disadvantages are increased diffraction effects and hence a limit on the minimum feature size that can be printed

Typical contact or proximity printing system

Projection Printing
Projection Printing : Commonly Used - wafer is separated from mask by several cm. Step-and-Repeat Projection Systems Adv: increased mask life features on the reticle do not have to be as small as final image Excimer Laser sources or high intensity mercury source for excitation

Typical Step-and-Repeat Projection system

Scanning Electron-Beam Systems

(thermionic cathode, TaB6/W, Zr/W, or Ti/W)

Beam accelerating voltages: 5-100keV Beam current densities: 20-100A/cm2

Raster Scan
A high precision motorized mechanical stage moves the wafer.

Vector Scan

X-ray Masks

Quite expensive masks and are prone to repairs. Difficult to maintain a membrane stability over a field larger than 10cm2. Wafer steppers are used to expose a small portion of mask at a time.

Anisotropic Wet Etching

Anisotropic Etch II

Anisotropic Etch III

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