Evaporative drying of submicrometer features in semiconductor manufacturing

TLDR: In this article, the time required to evaporate liquid out of a feature of given depth and relatively high aspect ratio is described in a non-dimensional form, provided that the temporal variation of the vapor pressure at the top of the feature is known.

Abstract: Liquid-phase processing is commonplace in semiconductor manufacturing. The present investigation focuses on evaporative drying of features such as trenches and vias. The time required to evaporate liquid out of a feature of given depth and relatively high aspect ratio is described in a nondimensional form. Provided that the temporal variation of the vapor pressure at the top of the feature is known, this description yields an estimate of the time required to evaporate liquid out of a feature of a given depth. The method developed is used to estimate the evaporation time for two realistic situations.