Systems and methods for determining residual compounds in plasma process
AssigneeTaiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd.
InventorsChen-Tai CHEN, Jing-Ran LIN, Jer-Shien YANG, Hung-Wen CHEN, I-Ling KUO, Yu-Hsun CHIANG
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Abstract
The present disclosure provides a system and method for predicting wafer fabrication defects resulting from plasma processing of wafers in a plasma processing chamber. The system and method include processing electromagnetic signals emitted from residual compounds peeled from the chamber walls during the plasma processing of the wafers to indirectly determine the likelihood that the wafers are incurring fabrication processing defects during the plasma processing.
Claims20
A system for monitoring a plasma process in a plasma processing chamber for fabrication defects on a semiconductor substrate resulting from the plasma processing of the semiconductor substrate in the plasma processing chamber, comprising:
- an optical emission spectrometer configured to:
- receive, over a time period, electromagnetic signals emitted by one or more residual compounds in the plasma processing chamber during plasma processing of the semiconductor substrate in the plasma processing chamber, the signals having corresponding wavelengths;
- analyze the electromagnetic signals received over the time period;
- and
- predict presence of fabrication defects on the semiconductor substrate based on analyzing the electromagnetic signals received over the time period.
A method for carrying out a plasma process on a semiconductor substrate in a plasma processing chamber, comprising:
- performing plasma processing of the semiconductor substrate;
- receiving, over a period of time, electromagnetic signals emitted by one or more residual compounds in the plasma processing chamber during plasma processing of the semiconductor substrate in the plasma processing chamber, the signals having corresponding wavelengths;
- processing the received electromagnetic signals for generating predictive signals from the received electromagnetic signals;
- analyzing the predictive signals over the time period;
- predicting presence of fabrication defects 322 on the semiconductor substrate based on the analyzing of the predictive signals over the time period;
- and
- modifying the plasma process based on the results of the predicting presence of fabrication defects on the semiconductor substrate.
A method for cleaning a plasma processing chamber in which a plasma process is carried out on a semiconductor wafer 110, comprising:
- performing plasma processing of the wafer;
- receiving, over a period of time, electromagnetic signals emitted by one or more residual compounds in the plasma processing chamber during plasma processing of the semiconductor wafer in the plasma processing chamber, the signals having corresponding wavelengths;
- analyzing the received electromagnetic signals;
- predicting presence of the one or more residual compounds in the plasma processing chamber based on the analyzing of the received electromagnetic signals;
- stopping the plasma process based on the results of the predicting presence of the one or more residual compounds in the plasma processing chamber;
- and
- cleaning the plasma processing chamber to remove the residual compounds or precursors of the residual compounds.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.