Papers by Author: Atsushi Hayashida

Abstract: We have been developing an innovative ultra-low environmental load cleaning technique by the use of steam-water mixed spray. We showed that this technique is quite effective in both cleaning and photo-resist stripping. We also found that the physical force associated with steam-water mixed spray is greater than that with air-water mixed spray; hence we proposed that the condensation plays an important role in this cleaning technique. In order to discuss further this mechanism, we perform the order estimation of physical processes in dynamics of liquid droplet moving in vapor flow impacting on a solid interface in this study. Results show that droplet impact velocity can be reduced while the droplet approaches to the solid surface. However, the vapor in the gap can condensate to either the liquid droplet or the solid surface with the velocity whose order of magnitude cannot be negligible compared to the impact velocity; hence the amount of vapor that should be pushed out from gap can be drastically reduced, This condensation results in the significant reduction of viscous force. This reduction of force with the existence of condensation reduces the impact velocity deceleration. Consequently significantly large impact pressure is generated.

Abstract: We performed two experiments on resist-coated wafers. In the measurement of the resist-wafer adhesivity, we confirmed that it is significantly increased by an HMDS layer in between. In the resist-removal experiment using steam-water mixed spray, we found that the area of resist removal is limited within the area of spray application if HMDS is used, otherwise the former can be larger than the latter. These results suggest that the resist removal from a wafer surface by steam-water mixed spray is essentially a peel-off process.

Abstract: It is well-known that ion-implant doses greater than 5E14 atoms/cm2 can create an amorphous carbon-like layer “crust”, and also that this crust is extremely difficult to dissolve with wet chemicals. In practice, a combination of dry plasma ashing and wet chemical removal is used to eliminate the photoresist. In this study, a novel photoresist stripping technique is proposed. We have improved wet vapor photoresist stripping technique [1] using the mixture of high-speed steam flow and purified water droplets. Relatively low pressure clean steam is mixed with purified water in the nozzle, and sprayed on a photoresist coated Si wafer. We have also developed a pre-treatment method in a chamber with keeping both temperature and humidity constant, in order to strip post ion-implanted photoresit. The most significant feature of this proposed technique is that we use water only; hence we are able to strip photoresist without chemicals.

Abstract: A novel cleaning technique using steam-water mixed spray is proposed. Relatively low-pressure super-purified steam (0.1 MPa - 0.2 MPa) is mixed with super-purified water in a nozzle, and then sprayed on a silicon wafer surface, which is located at approximately 10 mm from the nozzle. The most striking result of this proposed technique is that we are able to clean a wafer surface, i.e., to eliminate fine particles, without using any chemicals.