7.18 7.18
9.209.20
8.608.60
6.40
6.20
6.40
6.806.80
6.20
5.005.00
Infineon Technologies DresdenAdvanced Data Processing
Combining full IEP spectrum with an interferometric signal for depth etch endpoint detection
Frank Hoffmann, Infineon Technologies Dresden GmbH & Co. OHG Knut Voigtländer, Advanced Data Processing GmbH
Motivation• In absence of a stop layer, etch process and
equipment control is typically done by depth monitoring using an interferometric endpoint system.
• The state-of-the-art method of a single UV/VIS wavelength approach has to balance between appropriate signal-to-noise ratio and interference frequency.
State-of-the-Art Approach
Fig. 1: Process Scheme, shallow recess etch with no stop layer.
8th European Advanced Equipment Control / Advanced Process Control (AEC/APC) Conference Dresden - Germany, April 18 - 20, 2007
Method Description• This approach uses full spectra
time signals to form the interferometric reference trace by combining the individual wavelengths.
Fig. 2: Set of reference measurements containing the full spectra; the time behavior even of the shortest available wavelength has long signal period and is not suited for exact endpoint control.
• A PCA (principle component analysis) based method is used to decompose the full spectra into its linear independent components. A nonlinear optimization is used for a suited superposition of these components providing the final combined interferometric time signal.
Fig. 3: With PCA decomposition the independent signals can be discovered. A Modeling procedure is used to try to superimpose these signals to fit a given fast oscillating target signal.
• Model quality depending on target signal period and phase:- blue – very good modeling possible with
large signal period.- green – sufficient modeling with fast oscillating target- red –too fast oscillating target – no good modeling possible
modeling notpossible for 5starget period
very good modeling for 20s target period
for 10s target modeling is just possible
Fig. 4
• The resulting inter-ferometric refe-rence signal has shorter periods (more frequent Min/Max features), less noise and more clear inter-ference information.
Results • The full OES and IEP spectrum is collected by a standard EyeD endpoint system from Applied Materials, Inc. (spectral range 200 … 800 nm, time resolution 0.1 sec).
• The incoming IEP spectra is multiplied by the weighting vector during etch.
• The final interferometric time-based signal is generated by summing up all weighted spectral intensities within a relevant spectral range.
Fig. 5: Weighting vector for online calculation of the interferometric reference signal.
Fig. 6: Interferometric reference signal obtained by single wavelengths and by the PCA method. Final IEP trace with pattern (t1 … t4) detection.
blue: Interferometric reference signal provided by the pca method (smoothing over 5 data points)
red/green:Interferometric reference signal obtained by a typical single wavelength (280/229 nm, smoothing over 5 data points)
• The final interferometric time signal was used for in situ depth calculation using standard methods for endpoint algorithms.
• Using this method for endpoint detection a more reliable depth control for these shallow recesses is achieved in high volume production.
Fig. 7: Depth distribution (productive data) with single wavelength (left) and pca algorithm (right).
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