Development of CO2 gas cluster cleaning method and its characterization

Abstract

As devices become smaller to the extent of nano-scale, dry damage-free cleaning process has become an important area of study. Gas cluster cleaning technology has a potential to remove contaminant particles from the surface of semiconductor wafers without damage because a gas cluster is smaller than 100 nm in diameter. In this paper, a new dry cleaning process using a CO2 gas cluster beam is developed and a characterization method for gas cluster generation was studied experimentally. First, a CO2 gas cluster cleaning system was built to evaluate the feasibility of cleaning by use of a gas cluster beam, which is generated by expansion of gas through a converging-diverging nozzle and nozzle chilling. Cleaning tests were performed several times. Twenty-five to three hundred nanometers silica particles were cleaned off from the surface of a bare Si wafer and of a wafer with 60 nm poly-silicon structure by using this cleaning system. Preliminary result showed that the contaminants were successfully removed without damage to the wafer surface. To characterize the gas cluster, we used the particle beam mass spectrometer (PBMS) for the measurement of the size distribution of the gas clusters. The size distribution of clusters is measured by varying flow rate and nozzle coolant temperature. From the measurement results, the size of a gas cluster was less than 40 nm, which is expected to cause no damage on a surface based on the measurement of pattern collapse force. By using the PBMS, CO2 gas cluster cleaning system can be optimized to provide the maximum cleaning efficiency for nano-scale contaminant particles without damage to substrate surfaces. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.