This application is related to application Ser. No. 11/690,581, to Tiesheng Li, entitled “RESISTANCE-BASED ETCH DEPTH DETERMINATION FOR SGT TECHNOLOGY”, filed on Mar. 23, 2007, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,521,332, the entire disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.
This invention generally relates to semiconductor devices and more particularly to controlling the depth of etch in fabrication of semiconductor devices.
MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistor) devices have many electrical applications including use in RF/microwave amplifiers. In such applications, the gate to drain feedback capacitance must be minimized in order to maximize RF gain and minimize signal distortion. In a silicon power MOSFET, the gate electrode provides turn-on and turn-off control upon the application of an appropriate gate bias.
Conventional technologies for reducing the gate to drain capacitance Cgd in a DMOS device are still confronted with technical limitations and difficulties. Specially, trenched DMOS devices are configured with trenched gates wherein large capacitance (Cgd) between gate and drain limits the device switching speed. The capacitance is mainly generated from the electrical field coupling between the bottom of the trenched gate and the drain. In order to reduce the gate to drain capacitance, an improved Shielded Gate Trench (SGT) structure is introduces at the bottom of the trenched gate to shield the trenched gate from the drain.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,126,807 and 5,998,833 illustrate examples of shielded gate trench (SGT) MOSFET as a promising solution in high speed switching applications with the SGT function as a floating gate in the lower part of the trench or fix to a source voltage. However, a challenge of the processes disclosed in the above-mentioned references is to control the depth of the floating gate in order to avoid the malfunction of the MOSFET. Control of etch depth is particularly important, e.g. when etching back polysilicon to the middle of the gate trench because this is not an end point etch. As the feature sizes continue to shrink floating gate etch control becomes a more challenging and important task.
A common prior art technique for controlling etch depth, referred to herein as time control, involves control of the etch duration. In this technique an etch rate is determined and the etch depth may be calculated by timing the etch process and multiplying the etch rate by the etch duration. Unfortunately, the etching rate for polysilicon highly depends on numerous factors including, e.g., polysilicon grain size, doping, trench size and overall loading effect. Thus, the etch rate for polysilicon can be difficult to determine.
It is within this context that embodiments of the present invention arise.
Objects and advantages of the invention will become apparent upon reading the following detailed description and upon reference to the accompanying drawings in which:
Although the following detailed description contains many specific details for the purposes of illustration, anyone of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate that many variations and alterations to the following details are within the scope of the invention. Accordingly, the exemplary embodiments of the invention described below are set forth without any loss of generality to, and without imposing limitations upon, the claimed invention.
In
The material layer 108 may be isotropically etched back to a desired depth DT inside the trench 104 to form a shielding gate electrode 114 as shown in
DT=F(DL) (1)
The trench depth DT may be determined as long as DL data is available and a relationship between DT and DL is known. The function F(DL) relating DT and DL may be determined experimentally. For example, a test may be performed with trenches of different known depths filled with the material 108. Lateral undercut DL may be measured when the etch depth DT reaches the bottom of each trench. The function F(DL) may be determined from the measured values of DL and the known depths of the trenches.
A marking ruler 112 may be formed by a portion of material 108 underneath part of the mask 110 to facilitate measurement of a length L of the test portion 109. By way of example, the ruler 112 may comprise a series of regularly spaced substantially parallel features 113, such as teeth or triangles. As illustrated in
Direct reading of DL may be difficult and subject to error if DL is relatively small. To make the undercut DL somewhat easier to measure, the mask 110 may include a feature characterized by a shape with a sharp angle θ proximate a ruler 112. By way of example, and without loss of generality, the mask 110 may have a dagger shape or may include a dagger shaped portion with a length L0 that lies alongside with the ruler 112, as shown in
DL≈ΔL×tan θ/2
Where ΔL is a measured length change of the test portion 109 underneath the dagger shaped portion of the mask 110 after etching and θ is the tip angle of the dagger shape. If the tip angle θ is sufficiently small, a small amount of lateral etching DL can produce a relatively large and very measurable length change ΔL in the test portion 109, which may be easily and accurately read with the help of the ruler markings 113.
The dagger shape structure and the marking ruler may be employed in semiconductor wafers at an intermediate step of the semiconductor manufacturing process, and is preferably constructed in a testing area as a test structure to verify critical dimensions (CD) of device manufacture process.
Embodiments of the present invention allow for more precise real-time determination of etch depth in a simple and straightforward manner. The dagger shape structure combining the marking ruler also provides a tool to verify the precision control of the polysilicon etch back process.
While the above is a complete description of the preferred embodiment of the present invention, it is possible to use various alternatives, modifications and equivalents. Therefore, the scope of the present invention should be determined not with reference to the above description but should, instead, be determined with reference to the appended claims, along with their full scope of equivalents. Any feature, whether preferred or not, may be combined with any other feature, whether preferred or not. In the claims that follow, the indefinite article “A” or “An” refers to a quantity of one or more of the item following the article, except where expressly stated otherwise. The appended claims are not to be interpreted as including means-plus-function limitations, unless such a limitation is explicitly recited in a given claim using the phrase “means for.”
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