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| Number | Title | Issue Date |
| 5807761 | Method for real-time in-situ monitoring of a trench formation process In the manufacturing of 16 Mbit DRAM chips, the deep trench formation process in a silicon wafer by plasma etching is a very critical step when the etching gas includes 02. As a result, the monitoring of the trench formation process and thus th... | 09/15/1998 |
| 5792673 | Monitoring of eching On an insulating film covering a silicon substrate formed with desired circuit elements, a first Al wiring layer is formed and at the same time a test pattern is formed by using the same Al layer. The test pattern has a same thickness as the first Al wiri... | 08/11/1998 |
| 5788869 | Methodology for in situ etch stop detection and control of plasma etching process and device design to minimize process chamber contamination A method of etching a dielectric layer to form a via to an underlying conductive layer is described. The method includes etching selected portions of the dielectric using a plasma containing an etchant and monitoring electromagnetic energy of plasma emiss... | 08/04/1998 |
| 5785797 | Method and apparatus for monitoring etching by products A method of and an apparatus for monitoring etching by-products, capable of detecting and analyzing laser induced fluorescent light generated upon irradiating laser beams onto a by-product formed in the etching process. The method includes the steps of: s... | 07/28/1998 |
| 5781445 | Plasma damage monitor A test structure is described which indicates the occurrence of plasma damage resulting from back-end-of-line processing of integrated circuits. The structure consists of a MOSFET which is surrounded by a conductive shield grounded to the substrate silico... | 07/14/1998 |
| 5780315 | Dry etch endpoint method An improved method for selecting etch endpoint when dry etching conductive material layers for use in semiconductor device circuits has been created. The more precise endpoint selection procedure produces metallization patterns which are free from residue... | 07/14/1998 |
| 5747201 | Controlling method of forming thin film, system for said controlling method, exposure method and system for said exposure method A method for irradiating a substrate such as a semiconductor substrate, coated with a photoresist, with light to measure variations in optical properties such as reflectivity, refractive index, transmittance, polarization, spectral transmittance, for dete... | 05/05/1998 |
| 5739051 | Method and device for detecting the end point of plasma process Method and device for detecting the end point of a plasma process, the method and device being capable of making it unnecessary to set a threshold every process or every processed object and also capable of correctly detecting the end point of the plasma ... | 04/14/1998 |
| 5718796 | Dry etching system An etching system including a chamber, lower and upper electrodes provided in the chamber, a plasma light monitoring window provided in a side wall of the chamber, and an endpoint detecting device mounted outside the plasma light monitoring window. The pl... | 02/17/1998 |
| 5711851 | Process for improving the performance of a temperature-sensitive etch process The temperature of a dry etch process of a semiconductor substrate in a plasma etch chamber is controlled to maintain selectivity while also providing a high etch rate by introducing one or more cooling steps into the etch process. To maintain selectivity... | 01/27/1998 |
| 5711843 | System for indirectly monitoring and controlling a process with particular application to plasma processes The invention enables real-time control of a process using information regarding process properties that are indirectly related to the state of the process. A set of properties that characterize the process environment (fingerprint) is measured and used b... | 01/27/1998 |
| 5711849 | Process optimization in gas phase dry etching A method of designing a reactor 10. The present reactor design method includes steps of providing a first plasma etching apparatus 10 having a substrate 21 therein. The substrate includes a top surface and a film overlying the top surface, and the film ha... | 01/27/1998 |
| 5702562 | Dry etching apparatus and method Disclosed is a dry etching apparatus for etching an etched material located in an etching chamber by an etching gas plasma, which has: a plurality of emission detectors for detecting intensities of different wavelength components which are generated in et... | 12/30/1997 |
| 5688415 | Localized plasma assisted chemical etching through a mask A system for the formation of circuit patterns on a large flat panel display (78) using plasma assisted chemical etching to achieve a uniform or controllably nonuniform etch depth over the entire area of the display. An overlying film (60) is provided on ... | 11/18/1997 |
| 5683538 | Control of etch selectivity Selective etching of separate materials in a manufacture of a device, such as a layer of silicon dioxide on a substrate of silicon in a semiconductor device, is accomplished in a reaction chamber having an RF electromagnetic field which interacts with plu... | 11/04/1997 |
| 5683548 | Inductively coupled plasma reactor and process An inductively coupled plasma reactor and method for processing a semiconductor wafer (28). The inductively coupled plasma reactor (10) includes a plasma source (16) having a plurality of channels (38, 44) in which processing gases are independently suppl... | 11/04/1997 |
| 5679595 | Self-registered capacitor bottom plate-local interconnect scheme for DRAM A method and structure for a lower capacitor electrode for a dynamic random access integrated circuit. A polysilicon gate layer is formed over a thin layer of oxide in a first region of a semiconductor substrate. Another oxide layer is then formed overlyi... | 10/21/1997 |
| 5658423 | Monitoring and controlling plasma processes via optical emission using principal component analysis A method of monitoring the status of plasma in a chamber using real-time spectral data while conducting an etch process during the course of manufacturing of semiconductor wafers. Spectral data is collected during etching, with the spectral data character... | 08/19/1997 |
| 5658418 | Apparatus for monitoring the dry etching of a dielectric film to a given thickness in an integrated circuit Detecting the desired etch end point in the dry etching of a structure that includes a dielectric film formed onto a substrate down to a given thickness Ef. The structure is placed in the chamber of an etching equipment provided with a view-port. A light ... | 08/19/1997 |
| 5654903 | Method and apparatus for real time monitoring of wafer attributes in a plasma etch process The present invention provides a method and apparatus for monitoring the state of an attribute of a product during the manufacturing process. The invention employs an intelligent system trained in the relationship between the signatures of the manufacturi... | 08/05/1997 |
| 5653894 | Active neural network determination of endpoint in a plasma etch process The present invention is predicated upon the fact that a process signature from a plasma process used in fabricating integrated circuits contains information about phenomena which cause variations in the fabrication process such as age of the plasma react... | 08/05/1997 |
| 5650038 | Method for dry etching A method and apparatus for dry etching changes at least one of the effective pumping speed of a vacuum chamber and the gas flow rate to alter the processing of an etching pattern side wall of a sample between first and second conditions. The first and sec... | 07/22/1997 |
| 5635021 | Dry etching Method There is disclosed a dry etching method capable of achieving the formation of vertical line patterns and the minimization of a difference in size between an isolated line pattern and an inner line pattern. When the line width of an inner line pattern is s... | 06/03/1997 |
| 5622899 | Method of fabricating semiconductor chips separated by scribe lines used for endpoint detection A process has been developed in which photoresist thinning at the edges of silicon chips, resulting from photoresist flowing from semiconductor chips, exhibiting features with raised topographies, to flat scribe regions, has been reduced. The reduction in... | 04/22/1997 |
| 5620556 | Method for rapidly etching material on a semiconductor device Apparatus and methods for precise processing of thin materials in a process chamber by the use of ellipsometer monitoring is disclosed. The process includes rapidly etching a layer 42 of material covering a semiconductor device. The process includes placi... | 04/15/1997 |
| 5607602 | High-rate dry-etch of indium and tin oxides by hydrogen and halogen radicals such as derived from HCl gas An RIE method and apparatus for etching through the material layer of a transparent-electrode (ITO) in a single continuous step at a rate better than 80 Å/min is disclosed. Chamber pressure is maintained at least as low as 30 mTorr. A reactive gas that i... | 03/04/1997 |
| 5593922 | Method for buried contact isolation in SRAM devices A method for fabrication of polysilicon buried contacts is described which overcomes the problems of current leakage which occur at sub-micron spacings between these contacts. The failure of the conventional channel stop protection at these spacings is co... | 01/14/1997 |
| 5578161 | Method and apparatus for in-situ and on-line monitoring of trench formation process An apparatus (20) for monitoring the trench formation process in a silicon wafer on a full in-situ and on-line basis. The apparatus includes two spectrometers (30A, 30B) for viewing the plasma used in the trench etching process at zero and normal angles o... | 11/26/1996 |
| 5571366 | Plasma processing apparatus A plasma processing apparatus includes a chamber having a gas inlet port and a gas discharge port, a rest table, arranged in the chamber, for supporting a wafer which has a surface to be processed, a radio frequency antenna for supplying a radio frequency... | 11/05/1996 |
| 5552016 | Method and apparatus for etchback endpoint detection A method and apparatus (110) for determining the endpoint (e.g., TC1) of an etching step in a plasma etching process (101) for use in semiconductor wafer manufacturing. In one embodiment, an optical bandpass filter (e.g., 1542) is used for detecting a wav... | 09/03/1996 |
| 5534108 | Method and apparatus for altering magnetic coil current to produce etch uniformity in a magnetic field-enhanced plasma reactor A magnetic field enhanced plasma etch reactor system and method of operation is disclosed. In the system and operation, modulated sinusoidal currents are generated and applied 90° out of phase to opposing pairs of series connected electromagnets to produ... | 07/09/1996 |
| 5500076 | Process for dynamic control of the concentration of one or more etchants in a plasma-enhanced etch process for formation of patterned layers of conductive material on integrated circuit structures A process for dynamically adjusting the concentration of one or more reactants in a plasma assisted press, such as a plasma etch process or a plasma deposition process, is describe. The concentration of one or more reactants, as well as the concentration ... | 03/19/1996 |
| 5494697 | Process for fabricating a device using an ellipsometric technique An ellipsometric method for process control in the context of device fabrication is disclosed. An ellipsometric signal is used to provide information about the device during the fabrication process. The information is used to better control the process. A... | 02/27/1996 |
| 5479340 | Real time control of plasma etch utilizing multivariate statistical analysis Hotelling's T2 statistical analysis and control is used to provide multivariate analysis of components of an RF spectra for real time, in-situ control of an ongoing semiconductor process. An algorithm calculates the T2 value which is... | 12/26/1995 |
| 5467883 | Active neural network control of wafer attributes in a plasma etch process The present invention is predicated upon the fact that an emission trace from a plasma glow used in fabricating integrated circuits contains information about phenoma which cause variations in the fabrication process such as age of the plasma reactor, den... | 11/21/1995 |
| 5459082 | Method of making a semiconductor device A semiconductor device and a method of making the same capable of simplifying the process of making and reducing the cost of making. In the method a first layer is formed which has a plurality of conductors at its edge portion. Thereafter, a second layer ... | 10/17/1995 |
| 5395769 | Method for controlling silicon etch depth The present invention is a structure and method for controlling the depth of an etching process. In particular, the method and structure of the present invention creates a marker layer which resides between a layer to be etched and a protected layer. The ... | 03/07/1995 |
| 5393370 | Method of making a SOI film having a more uniform thickness in a SOI substrate To provide a method of making a SOI film having a more uniform thickness in a SOI substrate which makes it possible to keep the variance at &#b1;0.3 micrometers or less throughout the entire surface of the substrate, even for SOI substrates with a SOI fil... | 02/28/1995 |
| 5374327 | Plasma processing method HBr and Cl2 are used as etching gases and Ar is used as a carrier gas in an ECR etching apparatus in which a semiconductor wafer is processed. Light emitted from plasma generated is dispersed by first and second spectroscopes to detect intensit... | 12/20/1994 |
| 5372673 | Method for processing a layer of material while using insitu monitoring and control A method for planarizing a layer (18) begins by forming a layer (18) over a wafer having a substrate (12). Layer (18) has a surface topography which is not planar. A layer of material (20) is formed over the layer (18). The layer of material (20) has a su... | 12/13/1994 |
