An exemplary system may include a chamber configured to contain a semiconductor substrate in a processing region of the chamber. The system may include a first remote plasma unit fluidly coupled with a first access of the chamber and configured to deliver a first precursor into the chamber through the first access. The system may still further include a second remote plasma unit fluidly coupled with a second access of the chamber and configured to deliver a second precursor into the chamber through the second access. The first and second access may be fluidly coupled with a mixing region of the chamber that is separate from and fluidly coupled with the processing region of the chamber. The mixing region may be configured to allow the first and second precursors to interact with each other externally from the processing region of the chamber.

Semiconductor processing systems having multiple plasma configurations

Systems, chambers, and processes are provided for controlling process defects caused by moisture contamination. The systems may provide configurations for chambers to perform multiple operations in a vacuum or controlled environment. The chambers may include configurations to provide additional processing capabilities in combination chamber designs. The methods may provide for the limiting, prevention, and correction of aging defects that may be caused as a result of etching processes performed by system tools.

Processing systems and methods for halide scavenging

Methods of etching exposed titanium nitride with respect to other materials on patterned heterogeneous structures are described, and may include a remote plasma etch formed from a fluorine-containing precursor. Precursor combinations including plasma effluents from the remote plasma are flowed into a substrate processing region to etch the patterned structures with high titanium nitride selectivity under a variety of operating conditions. The methods may be used to remove titanium nitride at faster rates than a variety of metal, nitride, and oxide compounds.

Selective titanium nitride etching

Methods are described herein for etching metal films which are difficult to volatize. The methods include exposing a metal film to a chlorine-containing precursor (e.g. Cl 2 ). Chlorine is then removed from the substrate processing region. A carbon-and-nitrogen-containing precursor (e.g. TMEDA) is delivered to the substrate processing region to form volatile metal complexes which desorb from the surface of the metal film. The methods presented remove metal while very slowly removing the other exposed materials. A thin metal oxide layer may be present on the surface of the metal layer, in which case a local plasma from hydrogen may be used to remove the oxygen or amorphize the near surface region, which has been found to increase the overall etch rate.

Oxide and metal removal

A method of etching carbon films on patterned heterogeneous structures is described and includes a gas phase etch using remote plasma excitation. The remote plasma excites a fluorine-containing precursor and an oxygen-containing precursor, the plasma effluents created are flowed into a substrate processing region. The plasma effluents etch the carbon film more rapidly than silicon, silicon nitride, silicon carbide, silicon carbon nitride and silicon oxide.

Low temperature gas-phase carbon removal

Transistors and their methods of formation are described. Low dielectric constant material (e.g. a void) is placed between an elongated gate and a contact to increase the attainable switching speed of the gate of the device. An elongated structural slab of silicon nitride is temporarily positioned on both sides of the gate. Silicon oxide is formed over the silicon nitride slabs and the gate. Contacts are formed through the silicon oxide. The silicon oxide is selectively etched back to expose the silicon nitride slab. A portion or all the silicon nitride slab is removed and replaced with low-K dielectric or any dielectric with an air-gap to enable higher switching speed of the transistor. The highly-selective silicon nitride etch uses remotely excited fluorine and a very low electron temperature in the substrate processing region.

Feol low-k spacers

A multiple-grid extension of the adaptive integral method (AIM) is presented for fast analysis of scattering from piecewise homogeneous structures. The proposed scheme accelerates the iterative method-of-moments solution of the pertinent surface integral equations by employing multiple auxiliary Cartesian grids: If the structure of interest is composed of K homogeneous regions, it introduces K different auxiliary grids. It uses the k th auxiliary grid first to determine near-zones for the basis functions and then to execute AIM projection, propagation, interpolation, and near-zone pre-correction stages in the k th region. Thus, the AIM stages are executed a total of K times using different grids and different groups of basis functions. The proposed multiple-grid AIM scheme requires a total of O(N nz,near+?k N k ClogN k C) operations per iteration, where N nz,near denotes the total number of near-zone interactions in all regions and N k C denotes the number of nodes of the k th Cartesian grid. Numerical results validate the method's accuracy and reduced complexity for large-scale canonical structures with large numbers of regions (up to ~106 degrees of freedom and ~103 regions). Moreover, an investigation of HF-band wave propagation in a loblolly pine forest model demonstrates the method's generality and practical applicability. Multiple-grid AIM accelerated simulations with various tree models show that higher fidelity models for the trunk material and branch geometry are needed for accurate calculation of horizontally-polarized field propagation while lower fidelity models can be satisfactory for analyzing vertically-polarized field propagation.

A Multiple-Grid Adaptive Integral Method for Multi-Region Problems

This paper proposes a compact equivalent circuit model to characterize the split ring resonator (SRR) structure in metamaterials, based on the modeling approaches of the spiral inductors in MMIC In the equivalent circuit model, the lumped elements distribute compactly, and can be directly estimated by the geometry parameters of the SRR Numerical simulation results show that the model can simultaneously predict more than one resonance frequency of the SRR, and the predicted resonance frequency is accurate enough The equivalent circuit model can be advantageous to probe the root of the negative permeability, especially helpful for engineers to analyze SRR-based metamaterials exhibiting left-handed properties over multiple frequency bands

A compact equivalent circuit model for the SRR structure in metamaterials

This paper proposes a novel theoretical equivalent circuit model to characterize the split ring resonator (SRR), based on the analysis of the individual SRR geometry configuration and the distribution relationship of the electric charge and electric current in it Then the telegrapher equations are obtained to develop the constitutive relations applying transmission line theory Numerical simulations are used to validate the equivalent circuit model, and the results obtained by the equivalent circuit model are in good agreement with the present method

Modeling the effects of an individual SRR by equivalent circuit method

In this paper, the negative permittivity effect of the thin wire array in Left-handed material is clearly described by the transmission line theory. Firstly, the transmission line system equivalent to the thin wire array is presented, according to the periodic modulation action of the thin wire array on the incident electromagnetic wave and the equivalence relation of free space and transmission line. Secondly, the effective permittivity model of the asymmetric wire array is derived based on the transmission line theory, and the validity of the model is proven by numerical simulations.

http://ie-uestc.org/lwli/Publications/Conferences/2005/c2005b-f.pdf

Ming-Feng Wu

Papers

Feol low-k spacers

A Multiple-Grid Adaptive Integral Method for Multi-Region Problems

A compact equivalent circuit model for the SRR structure in metamaterials

Modeling the effects of an individual SRR by equivalent circuit method

Research on the Negative Permittivity Effect of the Thin Wires Array in Left-Handed Material by Transmission Line Theory