Grid surface conditioning for ion beam system
AssigneeVeeco Instruments Inc.
InventorsMohammad Saghayezhian, Binyamin Rubin, Kirill Gutsol
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Abstract
An in situ cleansing of grids of an ion beam system, such as a deposition and/or etching system, that includes applying a negative bias on the downstream-most grid and etching redeposited material from the grid. Any or all of the chamber pressure of the system, the extraction current in the ion beam source, the beam divergence, and perveance can be adjusted with the deceleration grid bias. The methods of this disclosure can be applied to any gridded ion source systems, including those with an assist ion beam.
Claims21
A method of conditioning a grid in an ion beam system, the method comprising:
- applying a negative bias to a downstream-most grid in the ion beam system;
- providing a broad and defocused ion beam through the negative biased downstream-most grid;
- and
- etching redeposited material off of the downstream-most grid.
A method of in situ conditioning a grid in a chamber of an ion beam system after processing a substrate, the method at a chamber pressure, at an extraction current, at an R value, at a perveance, and comprising:
- applying a negative bias to a downstream-most grid in the ion beam system;
- adjusting one or more of the chamber pressure, the extraction current, the R value, and the perveance;
- and
- providing an ion beam through the negative biased downstream-most grid.
A method for positioning multiple grids in an ion beam system, the multiple grids having a plurality of holes therethrough and located between an ion beam source and a target, the method comprising:
- applying a negative bias to a downstream-most grid in the ion beam system, the downstream-most grid closest to the target;
- providing an ion beam through the negative biased grid to condition the negative biased grid and produce a hexagon pattern on a surface of the conditioned negative biased grid;
- and
- determining if centers of the plurality of holes in the conditioned negative biased grid are aligned with centers of hexagons of the hexagon pattern.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.