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AssigneeNovellus Systems, Inc.
InventorsBryan L. BUCKALEW, Steven T. MAYER, Thomas A. PONNUSWAMY, Robert RASH, Brian BLACKMAN, Doug HIGLEY
Estimating the term…
Disclosed are pre-wetting apparatus designs and methods. In some embodiments, a pre-wetting apparatus includes a degasser, a process chamber, and a controller. The process chamber includes a wafer holder configured to hold a wafer substrate, a vacuum port configured to allow formation of a subatmospheric pressure in the process chamber, and a fluid inlet coupled to the degasser and configured to deliver a degassed pre-wetting fluid onto the wafer substrate at a velocity of at least about 7 meters per second whereby particles on the wafer substrate are dislodged and at a flow rate whereby dislodged particles are removed from the wafer substrate. The controller includes program instructions for forming a wetting layer on the wafer substrate in the process chamber by contacting the wafer substrate with the degassed pre-wetting fluid admitted through the fluid inlet at a flow rate of at least about 0.4 liters per minute.
An apparatus comprising:
A method comprising:
A non-transitory computer machine-readable medium including program instructions for control of an apparatus, the program instructions including code for operations comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.