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US 12,226,796 B2Granted
Bath systems and methods thereof
AssigneeTokyo Electron Limited
InventorsMichael Carcasi, Ihsan Simms, Joel Estrella, Antonio Luis Pacheco Rotondaro, Joshua Hooge, Hiroshi Marumoto
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method of processing a plurality of substrates includes immersing the plurality of substrates into a bath solution contained in a bath chamber; generating gas bubbles in the bath solution; projecting light from a light source toward the bath chamber; generating light sensor data by capturing light emanating off the bath chamber after interacting with the gas bubbles with a light sensor; and converting the light sensor data into a metric for the bath solution.
Claims20
A bath processing tool comprising:
- a bath chamber for wet processing wafers;
- an electromagnetic radiation sensor to capture an electromagnetic signal from a bath solution in the bath chamber, wherein the electromagnetic radiation sensor comprises a long wavelength infrared camera;
- a processor;
- and
- a non-transitory memory storing a program and coupled to the processor, the program to be executed in the processor and comprising instructions to:
- determine a metric of the bath solution based on the electromagnetic signal, and
- identify that a target specification for processing the wafers is reached based on the metric of the bath solution, wherein the metric is an endpoint metric, and wherein the instructions to determine the endpoint metric of the bath solution comprise further instructions to:
- determine a temperature of the bath solution with the long wavelength infrared camera.
5 more elements
A bath processing tool comprising:
- a bath chamber for wet processing wafers;
- an electromagnetic radiation source configured to generate an electromagnetic signal, the electromagnetic radiation source comprising multiple electromagnetic radiation sources, each of the multiple electromagnetic radiation sources having a different short infrared wavelength configured to project the short infrared wavelengths through a bath solution in the bath chamber;
- an electromagnetic radiation sensor to capture the electromagnetic signal from the bath solution in the bath chamber, wherein the electromagnetic radiation sensor is configured to capture the short infrared wavelengths transmitted through the bath solution;
- a processor;
- and
- a non-transitory memory storing a program and coupled to the processor, the program to be executed in the processor and comprising instructions to:
- determine an endpoint metric of the bath solution based on the electromagnetic signal, the endpoint metric of the bath solution comprises a spectrum of a component in the bath solution, and
- identify that a target specification for processing the wafers is reached based on the endpoint metric of the bath solution.
5 more elements
A bath processing tool comprising:
- a bath chamber for wet processing wafers;
- a plurality of light sources configured to generate an electromagnetic signal;
- an electromagnetic radiation sensor to capture the electromagnetic signal from a bath solution in the bath chamber;
- a processor;
- and
- a non-transitory memory storing a program and coupled to the processor, the program to be executed in the processor and comprising instructions to:
- determine a metric of the bath solution based on the electromagnetic signal, and
- identify that a target specification for processing the wafers is reached based on the metric of the bath solution, wherein the instructions to determine the metric of the bath solution comprises instructions to
- generate gas bubbles in the bath solution while immersing the wafers into the bath solution contained in the bath chamber;
- project light from the plurality of light sources toward the bath chamber, each of the wafers extending across multiple zones that are being illuminated with more than one of the plurality of light sources;
- generate light sensor data by capturing light emanating off the bath chamber after interacting with the gas bubbles with the electromagnetic radiation sensor;
- and
- generate across-wafer zone comparison data based on comparing light emanating off from one of the multiple zones with light emanating off from another one of the multiple zones.
10 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.