Tungsten films having low fluorine content
AssigneeLam Research Corporation
InventorsLawrence Schloss, Xiaolan Ba
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Abstract
Aspects of the methods and apparatus described herein relate to deposition of tungsten nucleation layers and other tungsten-containing films. Various embodiments of the methods involve exposing a substrate to alternating pulses of a tungsten precursor and a reducing agent at low chamber pressure to thereby deposit a tungsten-containing layer on the surface of the substrate. According to various embodiments, chamber pressure may be maintained at or below 10 Torr. In some embodiments, chamber pressure may be maintained at or below 7 Torr, or even lower, such as at or below 5 Torr. The methods may be implemented with a fluorine-containing tungsten precursor, but result in very low or undetectable amounts of fluorine in the deposited layer.
Claims20
A method comprising:
- exposing a substrate to alternating pulses of a fluorine-containing tungsten precursor and a reducing agent to thereby deposit a tungsten-containing film on the substrate, wherein a chamber pressure of a chamber housing the substrate during the fluorine-containing tungsten precursor pulses is less than 10 Torr, and wherein the total fluorine concentration in the tungsten-containing film is less than 1018 atoms/cm3.
A method comprising:
- depositing a first tungsten-containing film on a substrate by a fluorine-free process;
- and
- depositing a second tungsten-containing film on the first tungsten-containing film by atomic layer deposition using a fluorine-containing precursor, wherein a chamber pressure of a chamber housing the substrate during deposition of the second tungsten-containing film is less than 10 Torr and wherein the total fluorine concentration in the second tungsten-containing film is less than 1018 atoms/cm3.
A method comprising:
- exposing a substrate to alternating pulses of a fluorine-containing tungsten precursor and a reducing agent to thereby deposit a tungsten-containing film having a thickness on the substrate, wherein a chamber pressure of a chamber housing the substrate during the fluorine-containing tungsten precursor pulses is less than 10 Torr, and wherein a fluorine concentration profile of the tungsten-containing film is characterized by having a first profile portion where the fluorine concentration is less than 1018 atoms/cm3, wherein the first profile portion represents a majority of the thickness of the tungsten-containing film.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.