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US 12,320,755 B2Granted
System and method for detecting contamination of thin-films
AssigneeTaiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd.
InventorChung-Liang Cheng
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Abstract
A thin-film deposition system deposits a thin-film on a wafer. A radiation source irradiates the wafer with excitation light. An emissions sensor detects an emission spectrum from the wafer responsive to the excitation light. A machine learning based analysis model analyzes the spectrum and detects contamination of the thin-film based on the spectrum.
Claims20
A thin-film deposition method, comprising:
- outputting excitation light from a radiation source onto an interior reflective surface of a hollow tube, the radiation source positioned within the tube;
- reflecting, with the interior reflective surface, the excitation light onto a semiconductor wafer outside of and spaced apart from the tube via an interior transparent surface of the tube;
- sensing, with an emission sensor positioned within the tube, an emission spectrum received from the semiconductor wafer into the tube via the interior transparent surface responsive to the excitation light;
- and
- detecting a contamination of the semiconductor wafer based on the emission spectrum.
2 more elements
A thin-film deposition contamination sensing system, comprising:
- a hollow tube including:
- a first interior portion having a reflective surface;
- a second interior portion having a transparent surface;
- a radiation source positioned within the tube and configured to emit an excitation light through the transparent surface by emitting the excitation light onto the reflective surface;
- and
- an emissions sensor positioned within the tube and positioned to sense an emission spectrum emitted from a thin-film on a semiconductor wafer and received into the tube via the transparent surface.
3 more elements
A system, comprising:
- a thin-film deposition chamber configured to deposit a thin-film on a semiconductor wafer;
- a thin-film analysis chamber coupled to the thin film deposition chamber by a transfer channel configured to transfer the wafer from the thin-film deposition chamber to the thin-film analysis chamber and to maintain a vacuum condition of the thin-film deposition chamber within the thin-film analysis chamber;
- a radiation source within a hollow tube of the thin-film analysis chamber and configured to irradiate the thin-film with excitation light;
- an emissions sensor within the hollow tube of the thin-film analysis chamber and configured to detect an emission spectrum of photons emitted from the wafer responsive to the excitation light;
- and
- a control system configured to determine that a thin film of the wafer is contaminated based on a presence of a photon frequency corresponding to an energy difference between two electron energy levels of an expected contamination material of the thin film.
3 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.