Wafer processing method
AssigneeTaiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd.
InventorsYan-Hong LIU, Daniel M.Y. YANG, Che-Fu CHEN
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Abstract
A method includes: transferring a wafer from a factory interface through a load lock chamber to a buffer chamber; transferring the wafer from the buffer chamber to a process chamber; etching the wafer in the process chamber, to remove a material of the wafer; and after the wafer is etched, performing reflectance measurements to the wafer in the factory interface, the load lock chamber, the buffer chamber, or combination thereof, to identify if the material of the wafer is removed entirely according to a reflectance of the wafer.
Claims20
A method, comprising:
- etching a wafer to remove a material of the wafer;
- after the wafer is etched, performing reflectance measurements to the wafer, to identify if the material of the wafer is removed entirely according to a reflectance of the wafer;
- performing a first etching process to a first metal film on the wafer;
- and
- when a first insulator film beneath the first metal film is exposed, ceasing the first etching process.
A method, comprising:
- reflecting a first light beam from a wafer;
- detecting the first light beam to collect reflectance data;
- identifying, according to the reflectance data, whether an etching process of the wafer is performed completely;
- when the etching process is performed completely, performing a corresponding process after the etching process in a process flow to the wafer;
- and
- using neural net matching to search an optimal match between a modeled reflectance and the reflectance data to identify whether the etching process is performed completely to remove the wafer from the process flow.
A method, comprising:
- performing a first etching process to a wafer;
- striking a light beam with a wavelength of 1000 nanometers to the wafer;
- generating a reflected light beam from the wafer;
- and
- detecting the reflected light beam to determine whether to cease the first etching process.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.