Papers by Author: Xin Huan Niu

Abstract: With the developing of integrated circuit(IC) technique, improving of integration level, reducing of feature size and increasing the wafer size, the stringent requirements for global planarization during IC fabrication are raised. During chemical mechanical polishing(CMP) of multilevel interconnect for IC, there are obvious influence of the polishing quality on performances of the device．CMP slurry is one of the important factors of influencing the polishing quality. In this work, the stability of tungsten plug CMP slurry for IC multilevel interconnect was studied. Through experiment, interaction between the components in the CMP slurry was analyzed, and stable slurry with optimized polishing parameters to achieve higher removal rate were defined．

Abstract: Indium antimony(InSb) is one of the important materials which can be used to make semiconductor devices such as infrared detection device. Due to the low hardness and great brittleness, the surface scratching always appears and surface roughness is hard to lower during surface preparation. So it should be increasing the InSb surface quality during ultra precision machining. In this paper the InSb surface adsorption-control technology was introduced. Through controlling surface roughness during chemical mechanical polishing(CMP) and using preferential adsorption during cleaning, the adsorptions of InSb surface were controlled. Through experiments, the CMP optimal process parameters under the alkaline conditions were gotten. Under such conditions, the preferable surface state was realized. According to the preferential adsorption model, through using FA/O non-ionic surfactant the polished wafer surface can be kept in physical adsorption and easy cleaning state, so the wafer surface adsorption can be controlled effectively and the clean surface was obtained.

Abstract: Chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) of Cu pattern wafer based alkaline Cu slurry in GLSI was investigated. The performance of Cu removal rate and dishing condition were discussed in this paper. Different formation of alkali CMP slurry (Cu1 and Cu2 slurry) were observed by removal rate experiments and showed that alkaline slurry provided a robust polishing performance on initial removal rate, which Cu1 and Cu2 slurry were higher than that of commercial acidity slurry, and in addition, alkaline slurry also have good ending removal rate both in Cu1 and Cu2 slurry and favorable dishing in Cu2 slurry. Furthermore, the result indicated that Cu alkaline slurry with a complexing agent of R(NH2)n, compared with commercial acidity slurry with a inhibitor of Benzotriazol (BTA), have better application foreground for 45nm nod and more advanced nodes.

Abstract: Along with the feature size reducing and the increase of integration level rapidly in ULSI，the request for metal impurities contamination on silicon substrate surface appears specially rigorous. In this paper the chelating agent was added in cleaning solution in order to removing copper ion. FA/O, a new kind of chelating agent was studied in RCA cleaning solutions, which has 13 chelating rings and is free of sodium, stable and easily soluble. The XPS and GFAAS measured results indicate that FA/O is more efficient than NH4OH as a ligand. Cu contaminations on silicon wafer can be removed remarkably when adding a little FA/O to the cleaning solution or polishing slurry. When the chelating agent concentration of cleaning solution is 0.1% the removal rate of Cu atom reaches 83 percent. The FA/O chelating agent substituting NH4OH in SC-1 may simplify cleaning steps, and one cleaning step can remove Cu pollution on silicon wafer surface and meet the requirements of microelectronics technology.

Abstract: Chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) of copper interconnection in hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) as oxidizer based alkaline slurry was investigated. The new model is put forward, which is based on the characteristic of H2O2, chemical kinetics and mechanical removal. This properties of H2O2 can be effectively compensated the defect of surface topology during the process of polishing. Researcher previous study has shown that the surface is largely copper metal with Cu2O at low H2O2 concentrations and largely CuO at high H2O2 concentrations. Cu2O is more easily removed by both chemical and mechanical processes than CuO. During the CMP process, as the oxidizer concentration increases, the removal rate goes up initially followed by a gradual decay. This characteristic of oxidizer is used to achieve copper surface global planarity. The surface planarity was achieved by removing high area on the surface more quickly relative to the low area, because the concentration of Cu2O in the low area as the passivation film is more than the high area. Meanwhile the passivation film of the low area is thicker than the high area. In order to achieve polishing process optimization, the influence of pH adjustment and pressure, are also taken into consideration. Combining both RR and PE, the optimal H2O2 concentration and pressures are in range 1.0 ~1.5 vol% and 0.04 ~0.07 mpa, respectively. The roughness of surface which is measured by AFM is 0.49 after CMP.

Abstract: Sapphire (α-Al2O3) single crystal, as an important photoconducting device substrate material, stringent surface quality requirements, i.e. surface finish and flatness, are required. The use of chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) technique can produce high quality surface finishes at low cost and with fast material removal rates. The polishing mechanism was studied in this paper, and it was pointed that there were chemical and mechanical kinetics process respectively. The chosen polishing temperature was 40 oC. SiO2 sol was chosen as abrasive and the particle size is 40nm. The pH value was determined at 11.5~12. During CMP process C6382I-W/YJ single side polisher and SUBA 600 pad were used. After polishing and cleaning of sapphire surface, the measured removal rate was above 183.3nm /min and the surface roughness by using AFM was lower than Ra 0.3 nm. From the results, it was found that using such method, the optimal sapphire surface can be gotten, which is advantaged for epitaxial growth and device making-up.

Abstract: In this paper, the chemical character of NiP substrate of computer disk is analyzed, the CMP kinetics processing is discussed to indicate that the chemical reaction is the slowest and the control process. By analyzing essentiality of slurry on NiP film CMP, it is indicated that the chemical component of slurry acts the important role in CMP. New type of alkali slurry for NiP substrate was prepared and its CMP mechanism is studied with alkali slurry. Strong complexation of complex agent improved selectivity of concave area and convex area to get higher removal rate. Low roughness is realized with small size and low hardness silica sol as abrasive.

Abstract: Silicon-Germanium (SiGe) single crystal is a fully miscible solid solution with diamond-base, and has attracted keen interest as material for applications such as microelectronic and optoelectronic devices. Consequently, there is a need for SiGe crystals of low dislocation density and large dimensions. In this study, the growth mechanism and methods of SiGe bulk single crystal were described and the PMCZ method made by ourselves was analyzed. The properties of PMCZ SiGe single crystal with different Ge concentrations were discussed. The result shows that the longitudinal distribution homogeneity of impurity Ge was improved on the effect of magnetic field; with Ge concentration creasing, oxygen concentration in SiGe crystals was decreased, and the crystals mechanical strength faded up; with Ge-doped increasing, there appears new absorption peak near 710cm-1and 800cm-1 wave number in Si FTIR absorption spectral graph. From the results, it can be found that with improving the growth technique and increasing Ge concentration, the quality of SiGe single crystal will be improved effectively.