Microwave plasma assisted process for cleaning and deposition in future semiconductor technology

Abstract

The epitaxial growth of silicon layers is an important step in the fabrication of semiconductor devices. For conventional silicon epitaxy, high temperatures, up to 900 °C are necessary. However, in future, semiconductor technology epitaxy processes at lower temperatures are required to increase the integration density. The goal of this study was to investigate microwave plasma assisted processes for the selective removing of thin silicon oxide, the cleaning of silicon surfaces and the depositing of high quality silicon films. The main focus was to apply these processes for low temperature epitaxy. All processes, such as oxide removal, cleaning and deposition, were done in one chamber and with microwave plasma assistance. In order to remove silicon dioxide, the etching behavior of hydrogen, fluorine, and hydrogen/fluorine plasma was studied. It was shown, that with hydrogen/fluorine plasma, the best selectivity of oxide to silicon was reached. The deposition process of silicon was studied by growing μc-Si films. The process was characterized and optimized by spectral ellipsometry. After a successful characterization of all process steps, silicon epitaxy layers have been grown with in-situ removal of native oxide and in-situ surface cleaning. The temperature for all process steps was reduced below 450 °C.