Chamber seasoning to improve etch uniformity by reducing chemistry
AssigneesMattson Technology, Inc., Beijing E-Town Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd.
InventorsQi Zhang, Xinliang Lu, Hua Chung
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Processes for surface treatment of a workpiece are provided. In one example implementation, a method can include conducting a pre-treatment process on a processing chamber to generate a hydrogen radical affecting layer on a surface of the processing chamber prior to performing a hydrogen radical based surface treatment process on a workpiece in the processing chamber. In this manner, a pretreatment process can be conducted to condition a processing chamber to increase uniformity of hydrogen radical exposure to a workpiece.
Claims18
A method for processing a workpiece, the workpiece comprising a semiconductor material, the method comprising:
- conducting a pre-treatment process on a processing chamber to generate a hydrogen radical affecting layer on a surface of the processing chamber;
- and
- subsequent to performing the pre-treatment process, performing a hydrogen radical based surface treatment process on the workpiece in the processing chamber,
- wherein the hydrogen radical based surface treatment process exposes the workpiece to a plurality of hydrogen radicals in the processing chamber;
- wherein the pre-treatment process comprises conducting a plasma etch process on the workpiece in the processing chamber for a process period to deposit semiconductor byproduct material on the surface of the processing chamber to generate at least a portion of the hydrogen radical affecting layer.
A method of processing a semiconductor workpiece, the method comprising:
- generating one or more species using a plasma induced in a first chamber;
- filtering the one or more species generated by the plasma to create a first mixture;
- injecting hydrogen gas into the first mixture post filtering to create a second mixture, the second mixture comprising a plurality of hydrogen radicals;
- and
- exposing the semiconductor workpiece to the second mixture in a second chamber;
- wherein a surface of the second chamber comprises a hydrogen radical affecting layer to reduce hydrogen radical recombination on the surface of the second chamber;
- wherein the surface of the second chamber is coated with the hydrogen radical affecting layer by performing a plasma etch process on the semiconductor workpiece in the second chamber for a process period to deposit semiconductor byproduct material on the surface of the second chamber to generate the hydrogen radical affecting layer.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.