Method of integrated circuit (ic) chip fabrication
AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsSebastian U. Engelmann, Eric A. Joseph
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method of forming integrated circuit (IC) chips. After masking a layer of a material to be etched, the layer is subjected to an atomic layer etch (ALE). During the ALE, etch effluent is measured with a calorimetric probe. The calorimetric probe results reflect a species of particles resulting from etching the material. The measured etch results are checked until the results indicate the particle content is below a threshold value. When the content is below the threshold ALE is complete and IC chip fabrication continues normally.
Claims18
A method of forming integrated circuit (IC) chips, said method comprising:
- forming a layer of a material to be etched on a surface of a wafer;
- forming mask on the layer;
- atomic layer etching said layer;
- measuring etch effluent with a calorimetric probe, said calorimetric probe reflecting content of a species of material in said etch effluent indicating the material is being etched from said layer;
- checking measured etch effluent results;
- and when said results indicate the content of said species is above a threshold value,
- returning to atomic layer etching said layer.
A method of forming integrated circuit (IC) chips, said method comprising:
- forming a layer of a material to be etched on a surface of a wafer;
- forming mask on the layer;
- atomic layer etching said layer in a mixture of an inert gas with a second gas;
- measuring etch effluent with a calorimetric probe, said calorimetric probe reflecting content of a species of material in said etch effluent indicating the material is being etched from said layer;
- checking measured etch effluent results, wherein the signal to noise ratio of said measured etch effluent results is greater than two to one;
- returning to atomic layer etching said layer until said results indicate the content of said species is below a threshold value, wherein atomic layer etching said layer is complete;
- and
- continuing to a next IC fabrication step for a next IC chip layer.
(canceled)
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.