EE5036: VLSI Fabrication Principles

Contamination Control
 Wafers
• Slice of semiconductor
• As a substrate for devices

ultrananotec.com, exportersindia.com
IC fabrication flow

austin.cc.tx.us/HongXiao/Book.htm
 Yield
• Wafer yield (YW)= Wafersgood/ Waferstotal
• Die yield (YD)= Diesgood/ Diestotal
• Packaging yield (YC)= Chipsgood/ Chipstotal
• Overall yield (YT)= YW • YD • YC

austin.cc.tx.us/HongXiao/Book.htm
• Particles, organic films, heavy metals or alkali ions

• Significant yield loss because of contamination

austin.cc.tx.us/HongXiao/Book.htm
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• Threshold voltage of a MOSFET

• For tox=10 nm, QM=6.5Χ1011 cm-2 (10 ppm) can

cause a shift of 0.1 V in VTH
• High reverse bias leakage in pn junctions, refresh
time in DRAM

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• Effect of contaminants & importance of cleaning

• Residual chemicals/surface oxides affecting the

growth rate
Schwettman et al. Electrochem. Soc. Abstracts, 78-1 (1978)
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• Identification of critical areas & process steps

• Defect inspection & metrology at various stages of

manufacturing

• 3-tiered approach to tackle contaminants

1.Use of clean rooms
2.Appropriate wafer cleaning procedures
3.Impurity gettering
 Particle contaminants
• More than 75% yield loss because of defects caused by
particles on wafer
• Sources: People, machines, chemicals, process gases
• Average human being emits 5-10 million particles/min

SEM image of human hair Person with a bunny suit

• Use of ‘bunny suits’, hair nets, face masks, goggles, hand

gloves, shoes etc.
semguy.com
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pinterest.com
• Use of air showers at the entrance to the clean
room

• Use of robots for wafer handling

terrauniversal.com
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• Characterization of air cleanliness by ‘Class X’
• No. of particles of size 0.5 μm or larger permitted in
a cubic foot of air
• US FED-STD-209E standard
Maximum particles/ft3 ISO
Class
≥0.1 μm ≥0.2 μm ≥0.3 μm ≥0.5 μm ≥5 μm equivalent

1 35 7.5 3 1 ISO 3
10 350 75 30 10 ISO 4
100 3,500 750 300 100 ISO 5
1,000 35,000 7,500 3000 1,000 7 ISO 6
10,000 350,000 75,000 30,000 10,000 70 ISO 7
100,000 3.5×106 750,000 300,000 100,000 830 ISO 8

Wikipedia
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 ISO 14644-1 standard
• Maximum concentration of particles greater than the size
D (in μm) in a volume of 1 m 3 allowed in ISO class number
2.08
N is C = 10 N  
0.1
N  
 D 
maximum particles/m3
FED STD 209E
Class
>=0.1 µm >=0.2 µm >=0.3 µm >=0.5 µm >=1 µm >=5 µm equivalent

ISO 1 10 2
ISO 2 100 24 10 4
ISO 3 1,000 237 102 35 8 Class 1

ISO 4 10,000 2,370 1,020 352 83 Class 10

ISO 5 100,000 23,700 10,200 3,520 832 29 Class 100

ISO 6 1,000,000 237,000 102,000 35,200 8,320 293 Class 1,000

ISO 7 352,000 83,200 2,930 Class 10,000

ISO 8 3,520,000 832,000 29,300 Class 100,000

ISO 9 35,200,000 8,320,000 293,000 Room Air

Wikipedia, cleanairtechnology.com
• Particles of size in the range of few nm to few μm
• Smaller particles tend to coagulate into larger sized
particles & precipitate
• Two ways: Brownian motion & gravitational
sedimentation
• Smaller particles - Brownian motion
• Larger heavy particles - Gravitational sedimentation
• Constant air filtration through HEPA (High Efficiency
Particulate Air) or ULPA (Ultra-Low Particulate Air)
filters

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 HEPA filters
• Thin porous sheets of ultrafine glass fibers (< 1 μm
in diameter)
• Room air forced at typical velocities of 0.5 m/s

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• HEPA filters: 99.97% efficiency (0.3 μm particles)
• ULPA filters: 99.999% efficiency (0.1-0.2 μm
particles)

Sieving Direct interception

Inertial impaction Diffusion

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tsi.com, air-quality-eng.com
 Cleanrooms
• ISO definition:
“A room in which the concentration of airborne
particles is controlled, and which is constructed and
used in a manner to minimize the introduction,
generation, and retention of particles inside the
room and in which other relevant parameters, e.g.
temperature, humidity, and pressure, are controlled
as necessary”

• Willis Whitfield, designer of modern cleanrooms

with constant highly filtered air flow in 1960
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 Turbulently ventilated type Unidirectional flow type

• Unidirectional flow type cleanrooms, bank of HEPA

filters
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• Special walls, furniture, mops, buckets to minimize
generation of airborne particles
• Coved surfaces to avoid wall to wall, wall to
floor/ceiling corners
• Monolithic epoxy/polyurethane floor coating
• Particle counters to continuously monitor the no. of
particles
• Tight control of the temperature & humidity of the
inside environment
• Sound, lighting & vibration control measures maybe
incorporated
• Air change per hour greater than 20 times, typical
velocity around 0.5m/s
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Typical clean room environment Wikipedia, nasa.gov
• Clean room types based on ceiling filter coverage

• Best quality air for critical processes/lower exposure

to airborne contamination
• Less expensive
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• Minienvironments to isolate critical manufacturing
area & provide it with best quality air

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• Typical guidelines:

➢ For ISO class 6 (class 1000) & poorer quality :

HEPA filters with turbulent ventilation
➢ For ISO class 5 (class 100) : HEPA filters with
complete ceiling coverage to have unidirectional
flow
➢ For ISO class 4 (class 10) or lower : ULPA filters
with unidirectional flow

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tsi.com, air-quality-eng.com
 Clean Water
• Water is used heavily for cleaning
• Can have several contaminants like dissolved salts,
gases, microorganisms etc.
• Typical specifications:
Parameter Value

Resistivity* > 18 MΩ cm @ 250C

TOC < 30 μgm/l

Bacteria < 1 CFU/ml

Particle count (> 100 nm) < 100/l

*sodium chloride content of < 0.004 mg/l

• De-Ionized water is used (can’t be stored, used

fresh whenever required) Cleanroom Technology by Whyte
 Gases
• Gases used in various processes like chemical
reactions for deposition & etching, wafer cleaning &
drying etc.
• Purity specified as 5N or 6N

mathesongas.com
 Wafer Cleaning
• Remove particles, films (like photoresists) & trace
concentration of any other elements present
• Variety of procedures available depending upon the
type/history of the wafer
• RCA cleaning is widely used for Si
• Piranha solution (4:1 or 7:1 mixture of H2SO4 &
H2O2) used for removing photoresists
• Oxygen plasma may also be used
• Bias sputtering is used in sputter systems for surface
cleaning prior to deposition

mathesongas.com
 Fumehoods
• Type of local ventilation system
• Provide protection against toxic hazardous fumes or
vapors

• Air drawn from the

cabinet & expelled
outside
• Also useful for spill
containment

prime.erpnext.com
 RCA Cleaning
• Two step oxidizing & complexing process
• First solution (SC-1) 5 H2O : 1 H2O2 : 1 NH4OH
• Second solution (SC-2) 6 H2O : 1 H2O2 : 1 HCl
• SC-1 oxidizes organic films & complexes Group IB &
IIB metals
• Continuous etching & reoxidation to dislodge
particles from wafer surfaces
• SC-2 removes alkali ions & cations like Al+3, Fe+3 &
Mg+2 which form NH4OH insoluble hydroxides in the
SC-1 solution
• Reaction chemistry & oxidation potentials
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• Addition of ultrasonic (20-
50 kHz)/ megasonic (1
MHz) agitation for
effective particle removal
• H2O/HF step for removal of
SiO2

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• Conversion of metals into soluble ions by oxidation
• Oxidation is removing electrons from the atom &
reduction is adding electrons to the atom

(1)

(2)

• Generally (1) is driven to the right and (2) to the left so

that SiO2 is formed and M plates out on the wafer
• Good cleaning solutions drive (2) to the right since M+
is soluble and will be desorbed from the wafer surface
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• Works on the oxidation potentials

• Use of H2O2 as a strong oxidant

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• Environmental issues with disposal of chemicals
• Decomposition of H2O2 into H2O & O2 at high
temperatures, less effective cleaning
2H 2O2 → 2H 2O + O2

• Use of O3 or ozonized DI water

• Use of dry/vapor phase cleaning procedures
• Use of gas vapors, low plasmas, UV lights to break
surface bonds & release contaminants under
investigation

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 Gettering
• Collect unwanted impurities in non-critical parts of
the wafer far away from active device regions
• Final line of defense

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• Metallic impurities introduce deep level traps which
act as generation-recombination centers

• High reverse bias leakage in diodes

• Reduction in carrier collection in solar cells- loss of
efficiency

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• Gettering usually involves 3 steps
1.Freeing the undesired elements from trapping
sites
2.Diffuse them towards the gettering site
3.Trap them at the gettering site

• PSG (phosphosilicate glass

P2O5/SiO2) to trap alkali
ions like Na+ & K+

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• Intrinsic gettering: intrinsic defects & inside the bulk
• Extrinsic: external means & usually at the backside
• High diffusion of metals in silicon

Fick’s first law:

C
F = −D
x
− EA
D = D0 e kT

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• Values of diffusion constants & activation energies
for some typical metals

• Metals preferentially reside at sites in Si lattice with

imperfections
• Techniques like ion implantation, polysilicon
deposition or backside phosphorus diffusion for
extrinsic gettering Silicon VLSI Technology by Plummer
Weber Appl. Phys. A30, (1983)
• Intrinsic gettering depends on oxygen impurities in Si
• Outdiffusion of oxygen to create denuded zones
• Precipitation of oxygen to form SiO2 embryos of certain critical size (1-3 nm)
• Growth of embryos (50-100 nm) & precipitation to form extended defects

Thermal cycle for gettering

SiO2 precipitates in bulk of wafers

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