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US 7,351,663 B1Granted
Removing whisker defects
AssigneeCypress Semiconductor Corporation
InventorsAlex Kabansky, Hean-Cheal Lee, Sundar Narayanan, Prabhuram Gopalan, Vinay Krishna
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Abstract
A method of removing a defect from a gate stack on a substrate, comprises treating the gate stack with a plasma. The plasma comprises fluorine, the gate stack comprises a gate layer and a metallic layer, and substantially no photoresist is present on the substrate.
Claims20
A method of forming a semiconductor structure, comprising:
- selectively oxidizing silicon in a gate stack, causing formation of a defect;
- and
- treating the gate stack with a plasma, to remove the defect;
- wherein the plasma comprises fluorine,
- the gate stack comprises
- a gate layer comprising the silicon, and
- a metallic layer, on the gate layer, and
- the treating is carried out after stripping of any photoresist applied on the substrate.
5 more elements
A method of removing a defect from a gate stack on a substrate, comprising:
- selectively oxidizing silicon in a gate stack, causing formation of the defect;
- and
- treating the gate stack with a plasma, to remove the defect;
- wherein the plasma comprises fluorine,
- the gate stack comprises
- a gate layer comprising the silicon, and
- a metallic layer, on the gate layer,
- the treating is carried out after stripping of any photoresist applied on the substrate, and before spacer deposition, and
- the defect is selected from the group consisting of a whisker defect and a bump defect.
6 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.