Method and apparatus for uniformly reducing the characteristic wet etch rate of a silicon nitride film

Abstract

Disclosed herein are methods and apparatus directed to uniformly reducing intra-feature wet etch rates of silicon nitride films, and in particular to methods for depositing SiN films with reduced wet etch rates. The method may include adsorbing a Si-containing film precursor onto a semiconductor substrate in a processing chamber to form an adsorption-limited layer of the precursor, and then removing the unadsorbed precursor from the volume surrounding the adsorbed precursor . The adsorbed precursor can then be reacted by exposing it to a plasma containing N-containing ions and / or groups to form a SiN film layer on the substrate, which can then be reacted by exposing the SiN film layer to He plasma. The SiN film layer is dense. The aforementioned steps can then be repeated to form another dense SiN film layer on the substrate. Also disclosed herein are apparatuses employing the aforementioned techniques for depositing SiN films with reduced wet etch rates on semiconductor substrates.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates generally to the field of semiconductor processing, and more particularly to methods and apparatus for uniformly reducing wet etch rates within features of silicon nitride films. Background technique [0002] In the semiconductor industry, as device and feature sizes continue to shrink, and as three-dimensional device structures (for example, Intel Corporation's tri-gate transistor architecture) become more common in integrated circuit (IC) design, depositing thin The ability of conformal films (films of material with a uniform thickness corresponding to the shape of the underlying structure, even though the underlying structure is not flat) will continue to be appreciated. Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is a film formation technique well suited for depositing conformal films due to the fact that a single cycle of ALD deposits only a single thin layer of material, the thickness of which is limited by the chemical reactions ...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

However, forming such etch-resistant SiN films via ALD processes is difficult to achieve within typical thermal budget constraints.

Images