Plasma Etching - Tegal 901e

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Tegal 900 series Plasma/RIE etch System are used by the Semiconductor Industry for integrated circuit fabrication. The system are used in one part of the sequence of manufacturing steps that transfer a pattern formed from a layer of photosensitive material, the photoresist, to a layer that makes up a permanent part of the final device. The process of defining a pattern with photoresist known as photolithography, while the etch process transfers the photoresist pattern to the permanent layer.The 900 Series systems deliver highly reliable, repeatable results in etching a variety of films used to manufacture semiconductor, telecommunications and optoelectronics devices, flat panel displays and thin film magnetic heads.
Upgraded Tegal 901e system is designed around a production-proven wafer transport design that can accommodate 75 mm to 150 mm round silicon, GaAs, InP, and dielectric material substrates. The transport can also be configured to accommodate rectangular substrates up to 125 mm on a side.
Combined with Allwin21 Corp Superior Temperature Control Technologyand AW Control Software, upgraded Tegal901e provides significant advantages over the original systems.

Single Wafer, Multi-Step Processing
Closed-Loop Temperature Control
Pressure Control
 Accurate, closed-loop pressure control with “butterfly-style” throttle valve and capacitance manometer
New hardware includes: New control Board with cable, new timer counter with watch dog, Pentium
Computer with 17” LCD Monitor, standard keyboard and mouse.
Software calibration and easy to be done.
 More functions and I/O hardware “exposed” for easier maintenance and trouble shooting.
It is easy to edit recipe with GUI and graph display.
Save all process data on the computer hard disk.
A/D and D/A precision is 14 to 16 bits.
Detect in process and with color curve displayed on the screen.
Robot teach is on the GUI and easy to do the procedure with new concept teaching method.
Software watch dog to eliminate machine damage duo to the computer locks up or freeze.
Sensor status detect function.
On line help function
Better performance and maintenance than the original systems

Upgraded Tegal 901e Applications
nitride etch,
 photoresist Descum,
polyimide and BCB etches,
zero layer etch,
 backside etch,
isotropic oxide etch,
non-critical polysilicon etch
Titanium/tantalum alloy etch.

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Allwin21 has developed technologies to upgrade old semiconductor process equipment so they give superior results with less down time. This increases the yield, improves uptime, reduces maintenance cost, and extends the life of capital equipment.

Allwin21 has created the AW Control Software to allow the user to control the entire machine from one single interface. The software incorporates a Superior Temperature Control Technology that surpasses all original manufactures specs. It also allows the user to develop new processes.

Allwin21 has also modified and redesigned mechanical and electronic components of many systems to make them more reliable and easier to troubleshoot.

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AW Control Software
The AW Control Software provides a unique upgrade for RTP, Stripper, Etching and other systems which have won a high reputation among our customers.

The AW software Integrates all of the Process Control into a single reliable software package. It allows the user to control the entire machine from one single interface. The user can create recipes, run processes with the recipes, view and analyze process parameters, calibrate the entire system, and run diagnostics routines.
Features:
• GUI interface
• Real-Time process data acquisition
• Real-Time graphics
• Process Data Analysis
• Process Data and Recipe storage on a hard drive.
• Recipe Editor for Multi-step Processing
• System Calibration and Diagnostics
• Closed-loop System Controls

It has a Graphics User Interface (GUI) instead of the old Text based user interface. It is intuitive and easy to use with mouse or touch screen (optional).

The AW software Acquires Process Data in real-time. It then plots it in real-time on a graphics X-Y plot. So, what you see is what is actually happening. The process data is stored on a hard disk in real-time. This data can latter be retrieved and analyzed.

The blue line is the actual temperature. The black line is the recipe curve. The red line is the power changing for the heating source.

The AW software contains a Recipe Editor for creating and editing of multi-step process recipes. Recipes are created to automate the process of semiconductor wafers by telling the process control how to control each available parameter. It also allows the fine-tuning of certain parameters for specific applications.

It has comprehensive System Calibration and Diagnostics routines to automate many tasks and to help troubleshoot the system.

By maintaining real-time independent Closed-loop System Controls, the system optimizes vital device parameters

The AW Software upgrade uses a Pentium class computer, eliminating the old 80386 CPU, 6800 MPU, or the Z-80 MPU.
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Superior Temperature Control Technology
The software incorporates a Superior Temperature Control Technology that surpasses all original manufactures specs. The AW software is capable of controlling the temperature of the wafer to ± 1°C. It is also able to control the temperature from wafer-to-wafer to ± 0.5°C. This is possible with the built-in automated calibration routines and the upgraded 16 bit D/A card. First, the A/D circuits for the temperature feedback devices are calibrated. Then the pyrometer (optional on some systems) is calibrated. In order for the software to understand the thermal capacitance of the system, the chamber is also calibrated. These calibration routines allow the software to understand the complete system, taking into consideration the subtleties of the A/D circuits and the thermal capacitance of heating and cooling of the process chamber.
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Plasma Etch

Etching is used in microfabrication to chemically remove layers from the surface of a wafer during manufacturing. Etching is a critically important process module, and every wafer undergoes many etching steps before it is complete.
If the etch is intended to make a cavity in a material, the depth of the cavity may be controlled approximately using the etching time and the known etch rate. More often, though, etching must entirely remove the top layer of a multilayer structure, without damaging the underlying or masking layers. The etching system's ability to do this depends on the ratio of etch rates in the two materials (selectivity).
Some etches undercut the masking layer and form cavities with sloping sidewalls. The distance of undercutting is called bias. Etchants with large bias are called isotropic.
Modern VLSI processes avoid wet etching, and use plasma etching instead. Plasma systems can operate in several modes by adjusting the parameters of the plasma. Ordinary plasma etching operates between 0.1 and 5 Torr. (This unit of pressure, commonly used in vacuum engineering, equals approximately 133.3 pascals) The plasma produces energetic free radicals, neutrally charged, that react at the surface of the wafer. Since neutral particles attack the wafer from all angles, this process is isotropic.
The source gas for the plasma usually contains small molecules rich in chlorine or fluorine. For instance, carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) etches silicon and aluminium, and trifluoromethane etches silicon dioxide and silicon nitride. A plasma containing oxygen is used to oxidize ("ash") photoresist and facilitate its removal.

Allwin21 Corp focuses on the following main Etcher equipments.
Matrix303
Matrix403
Gasonics AE2001
 Gasonics PEP3510
Tegal901e
Tegal903e
AW Control Software provides the unique upgrade system for Matrix, Gasonics, Tegal, Series. Advantage of upgraded system include:
Integrated process control system
Real time graphics display
Real time process data acquisition, display, and analysis
Programmed comprehensive calibration and diagnostic functions
Better performance and maintenance than the original systems
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We focus on the following tools.
Rapid Thermal Process/Annealing.
(1)Upgraded AG 210 (2)Upgraded AG 410 (3)Upgraded AG 610(AccuThermo AW 610).
(4)Upgraded AG 4100 (5)Upgraded AG 4100S (6)Upgraded AG 4108 (7)Upgraded AG 8108
(8)Upgraded AG 8800
Plasma Etch/Asher/Descum.
(1)Upgraded Matrix 105 (2)Upgraded Matrix 205 (3)Upgraded Matrix 303 (4)Upgraded
Matrix 403
(5)Upgraded Tegal 901 (6)Upgraded Tegal 903 (7)Upgraded Tegal 901e(8)Upgraded Tegal 903e
(9)Upgraded Gasonics AE 2001 (10)Upgraded Gasonics Aura 1000 (11)Upgraded Gasonics Aura 3010
(12)Upgraded Gasonics PEP 3510 (13)Upgraded Branson IPC 3000
PECVD/RIE/ICP.
(1)STS 310 (2)STS 320 (3)Plasma Thermal 700 720 (4)Plasma Thermal 790
Probe/Tester.
(1)EG 1034 (2)EG 2001 (3)EG 2010 (4)HP 4062 (5)HP 4145B (6)HP 4142B (7)HP 4155
(8)HP 4084B (9)HP 4085B
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peterchen@***