The present invention relates to a plasma processing apparatus.
Plasma etching is widely used in fabrication processes of semiconductor devices such as DRAM and microprocessors. As one of challenges in processing of semiconductor devices using plasma, reducing the amount of metallic elements adhering to a wafer (reducing metallic contamination) can be cited. If, for example, devices are fabricated while metallic atoms of iron, aluminum or the like adhere to the wafer, degradation of device characteristics may be caused, leading to lower yields. Thus, materials containing less metal are increasingly used as materials used for inner walls of a processing chamber or materials of less consumption (plasma resistant materials) are adopted. As an example of adopting materials containing less metal as materials used for inner walls of a processing chamber, providing of a quartz cover on the surface of inner walls of the processing chamber and structures inside the processing chamber so that most of inner walls in contact with plasma is the quartz can be cited (for example, JP-A-2001-217225 and JP-A-2008-251857 (corresponding to U.S. Patent Publication No. 2008/236494)).
With increasingly microscopic structures of devices, requirements for the reduction of metallic contamination become more severe. Thus, the inventors examined possible locations of the source of metallic contamination in a plasma processing apparatus. The examination result will be described below by taking a μ wave-ECR plasma etching apparatus as an example.
In a plasma processing apparatus such as a μ wave-ECR plasma etching apparatus configured to introduce high frequency power for plasma generation and bias power into a processing chamber through the window of a dielectric material, a cover (inner cylinder) of quartz or ceramic such as yttria is installed to prevent bulk plasma (plasma with which to perform plasma processing on a member to be processed) from coming into contact with inner walls or components that could become a source of metallic contamination. When configured as described above, if the inner cylinder is installed close to the window of the dielectric material within a fixed distance therefrom, it turns out that high frequency power for plasma generation is more likely to propagate into the inner cylinder and separately from bulk plasma generated to perform plasma processing on the member to be processed, a local discharge (abnormal discharge) arises between the inner cylinder and the inner wall or various components to be protected in the inner cylinder. Due to the local discharge, there is a concern of contamination of wafer after metallic elements generated from the surface of the inner wall or components being mixed into the bulk plasma. Therefore, it is necessary to suppress the discharge arising in such a gap and also to take measures to suppress the propagation of the high frequency power.
JP-A-2008-251857 discloses that a conductive material is installed inside a cover of a sidewall made of quartz. According to this method, however, a conductor is potentially floating and high frequency power is considered to be propagated by excitation of the conductor. In addition, the high frequency power propagates near the surface of the quartz without going through a conductive material inside the quartz and therefore, blocking the propagation of the high frequency power adequately is determined to be difficult.
An object of the present invention is to provide a plasma processing apparatus capable of reducing metallic contamination of a member to be processed during plasma processing.
As an embodiment to achieve the object, a plasma processing apparatus having a processing chamber; a gas supply unit that supplies a process gas to the processing chamber; an exhaust unit that reduces a pressure of the processing chamber; a high frequency power supply to supply high frequency power that generates plasma inside the processing chamber; a stage electrode arranged in the processing chamber to mount a member to be processed on; a high frequency bias power supply that applies a high frequency bias to accelerate ions incident on the member to be processed to the stage electrode; a top plate installed in an upper portion of the processing chamber; a shower plate installed below the top plate to supply the process gas into the processing chamber; and an inner cylinder arranged below the shower plate to prevent a sidewall of the processing chamber from coming into direct contact with plasma and in which the high frequency power to generate the plasma is introduced into the processing chamber via the top plate and the shower plate, wherein
a grounded spacer whose base material is a metal is installed between the shower plate and the inner cylinder.
Also, a plasma processing apparatus includes:
a grounded chamber;
a processing chamber arranged inside the chamber to process a member to be processed by using plasma;
a gas supply unit that supplies a process gas to the processing chamber;
an exhaust unit that reduces a pressure of the processing chamber; a high frequency power supply that supplies high frequency power to generate the plasma;
a stage electrode arranged in the processing chamber to mount the member to be processed on;
a high frequency bias power supply that applies a high frequency bias to accelerate ions incident on the member to be processed to the stage electrode;
a shower plate installed in an upper portion of the processing chamber to supply the process gas into the processing chamber;
an inner cylinder arranged below the shower plate to prevent a sidewall of the chamber from coming into direct contact with the plasma;
a ground arranged to cover a portion of the inner cylinder via a gap and whose surface on a center side of the processing chamber is coated with a plasma resistant material; and
a spacer arranged between the shower plate and the inner cylinder by being grounded, whose surface on the center side of the processing chamber is coated with the plasma resistant material and whose base material is a conductor.
According to the present invention, by arranging a grounded spacer between a shower plate and an inner cylinder, the propagation of high frequency power from the shower plate into the inner cylinder made of a dielectric material such as quartz is blocked, generation of local plasma in a gap between the inner cylinder and a wall surface opposed to the inner cylinder is suppressed, and generation of metallic elements causing metallic contamination from the wall surface in the gap is suppressed and therefore, a plasma processing apparatus capable of reducing metallic contamination of a member to be processed during plasma processing can be provided
Other objects, features and advantages of the invention will become apparent from the following description of the embodiments of the invention taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.
The embodiments of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. A μ wave-ECR plasma etching apparatus will mainly be described in the embodiments, but the present invention can also be applied to other plasma processing apparatuses. In figures, the same reference numeral indicates the same component.
The first embodiment of the present invention will be described with reference to the drawings.
An inner cylinder (sidewall cover) 130 is installed in a sidewall portion forming a space above the wafer 102 in the processing chamber 101 In the present embodiment, quartz is selected as the material of the inner cylinder. A ground 132 is installed in a lower portion of the inner cylinder 130. The member constituting the ground 132 is a metal such as aluminum whose surface is coated with yttria.
A ring-shaped spacer 131 is installed between the inner cylinder 130 and the shower plate 105. The ring-shaped spacer 131 uses aluminum as a base material and the entire surface on the inner side of the ring-shaped spacer (center side of the processing chamber) and portions of a top surface and a bottom surface are coated with yttria as a plasma resistant material. Then, electric conduction to the chamber 109 is realized through a portion not coated with yttria. An inside diameter D1 of the ring-shaped spacer 131 is set smaller than an inside diameter D2 of the inner cylinder 130. While a local discharge can be suppressed by arranging the ring-shaped spacer 131 between the shower plate 105 and the inner cylinder 130, the local discharge can be suppressed more effectively by adopting the above relationship between the inside diameter D1 and the inside diameter D2 (details will be described later). The plane shape of the ring-shaped spacer is adjusted to the shape when the inner cylinder is viewed vertically from above and if the shape when the inner cylinder is viewed vertically from above is not a ring shape, the plane shape is changed accordingly. A metal is used as a base material in the embodiments, but any conductor may be used. However, metals of low resistance are desirable.
Next, problems of a plasma processing apparatus of related art will be described with reference to
The surface (surface m on the backside) of the ground 132 in the gap A and a surface n of the chamber 109 in the gap B are not directly visible to bulk plasma (there is no incidence of ions generated in the bulk plasma). Thus, these surfaces are not coated with yttria or the like, which has strong plasma resistance, hut is expensive. Therefore, such surfaces are SUS, aluminum, or alumite and if plasma is generated in the gap A or B, metallic elements may be generated and mixed into the bulk plasma to cause metallic contamination of the wafer (in this case, a metal generated by discharge in the gap B is mixed into the bulk plasma via, for example, a gap formed between the shower plate 105 and the inner cylinder 130).
In contrast, by installing the ring-shaped spacer 131 between the quartz shower plate 105 and the inner cylinder 130 as shown in
Next, the material and thickness of the ring-shaped spacer will be described. If the base material of the ring-shaped spacer is a metal, the depth to which the surface effect of a current extends may be considered to determine whether a micro wave can be blocked. If the angular frequency (value obtained by multiplying the frequency Hz by 2ρ) of the micro wave is ω, the magnetic permeability is μ, and the conductivity is σ, the depth δ of the surface effect is given by
δ=(2/(ω·μ·σ))0.5
Therefore, the thickness of the metal as the base material of the ring-shaped spacer is desirably made thicker than the depth to which the surface effect of extends and if the thickness of the metal as the base material of the ring-shaped spacer in a position between the shower plate and the inner cylinder is t, it is desirable to set
t≧δ
that is,
t≧(2/(ω·μ·σ))0.5
If the frequency of the micro wave is 2.45 GHz and the base material is aluminum, the depth of the surface effect is on the order of 1 μm. In the present embodiment, the thickness t is set to a few mm from the viewpoint of difficulty of actual processing.
Next, the significance of grounding the ring-shaped spacer will be described.
Next, a desirable structure of the ring-shaped spacer will be shown more concretely.
Next, the reason why the inside diameter D1 of the surface a on the inner side of the ring-shaped spacer is smaller than the inner cylinder D2 will be described with reference to
As a result of applying the configuration shown in
In the present embodiment, quartz is used for the shower plate and the inner cylinder. However, the quartz material of the inner cylinder and the shower plate can also be constituted of other dielectric materials, for example, a sintered yttria material. In addition, materials of slightly different dielectric constants can be combined such as both of the shower plate and the inner cylinder are yttria and one is yttria and the other is quartz.
When the ring-shaped spacer 131 is made of, instead of metal, dielectric materials totally including the base material, if the wavelength of high frequency power inside the ring-shaped spacer is λ′, a certain degree of shielding effect can be expected by setting a thickness that does not allow the following formula to hold true if possible:
t=0.5nλ′.
In addition, metallic contamination can further be reduced by coating the backside (surface m in
According to the present embodiment, as described above, a plasma processing apparatus capable of reducing metallic contamination of a member to be processed during plasma processing can be provided. In addition, a micro wave propagating up to the inner cylinder by going through the sheath can further be reduced by making the inside diameter D1 of the ring-shaped spacer smaller than the inside diameter D2 of the inner cylinder so that a local discharge can be suppressed more effectively.
The second embodiment of the present invention will be described using
In the present embodiment, a configuration in which a metal is inserted between the inner cylinder 130 and the shower plate 105 by changing the shape of a portion of components constituting the chamber 109 adopted. The head piece 133 (head piece+ring-shaped spacer) is electrically connected to the chamber 109 and grounded. In addition, the surface a on the inner side in contact with bulk plasma is coated with yttria and the neighborhood of a region H closer to the surface a of the top surface b and the bottom surface c is also coated with yttria.
In the present embodiment, a ring-shaped spacer portion integrally formed as a portion of the head piece 133 is arranged between the shower plate 105 and the inner cylinder 130 and therefore, the propagation of a micro wave from the shower plate 105 to the inner cylinder can be suppressed and a local discharge can be suppressed. Also, by making the inside diameter of the ring-shaped spacer portion included in the head piece 133 smaller than the inside diameter of the inner cylinder 130 smaller, a micro wave propagating up to the inner cylinder 130 by going through the sheath 200 can be reduced so that a local discharge can be suppressed more effectively. In addition, by integrally forming the ring-shaped spacer as a portion of the head piece, the number of components is reduced and the precision with which the inner cylinder, the shower plate, and the ring-shaped spacer are assembled can be improved.
As a result of applying the configuration shown in
According to the present embodiment, as described above, a plasma processing apparatus capable of reducing metallic contamination of a member to be processed during plasma processing can be provided. In addition, a micro wave propagating up to the inner cylinder by going through the sheath can further be reduced by making the inside diameter D1 of the ring-shaped spacer smaller than the inside diameter D2 of the inner cylinder so that a local discharge can be suppressed more effectively. Also, by forming the ring-shaped spacer integrally with the head piece, the number of components is reduced and the precision with which the inner cylinder, the shower plate, and the ring-shaped spacer are assembled can be improved.
The present invention is not limited to the above embodiments and includes various modifications. For example, the above embodiments are described in detail to make it easier to understand the present invention and are not necessarily limited to embodiments including all described configurations. A portion of the configuration of some embodiment may be replaced by the configuration of another embodiment or the configuration of some embodiment may be added to the configuration of another embodiment. Also, an addition, deletion, or substitution of another configuration can be made to a portion of the configuration of each embodiment.
It should be further understood by those skilled in the art that although the foregoing description has been made on embodiments of the invention, the invention is not limited thereto and various changes and modifications may be made without departing from the spirit of the invention and the scope of the appended claims.
Number | Date | Country | Kind |
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2014-128197 | Jun 2014 | JP | national |