Solid State Processing and

Integrated Circuit Laboratory

EE504L

Kian Kaviani
Ming Hsieh Electrical Engineering Dept.
Viterbi School of Engineering

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 Lecture 1b
Fundamental of Contamination Control

Sources of Contamination in the Clean Rooms:

1. Tooling (40%)
2. People (26%)
3. Piece Parts (15%)
4. Chemicals and Material Issues (10%)
5. Facilities (<5%)
6. Maintenance (<5%)

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 Lecture 1b
Why do we need Clean Rooms

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 Lecture 1b
Why do we need Clean Rooms

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Contamination Prevention Measures
”An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure”

1. Use of Clean room class < 1

2. Use of SMIF Concept on each Equipment
3. Use of Local “mini environment”, in which 4.
through use of UHP-N2,we can achieve clean
room classification less than 0.1
4. Reduction in number of operators in the
clean room
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 Lecture 1b
Clean Room Elements

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Clean Room Design

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Clean Room Elements

1. Adhesive floor mats

2. Gowning Area
3. Air Pressure
4. Air Showers
5. Service Bay Area
6. Double-door-pass-through
7. Static Control

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 Lecture 1b
Clean Room Elements

1. Adhesive Floor mats

At every entrance to pull off and holds dirt adhered to the bottom of
the shoes.
2. Gowning area
a) Buffer between clean room and the plant
b) Always supply with filtered air from ceiling HEPA filters
c) Store Clean room apparel and change to clean room garments
3. Air Pressure
a) Highest pressure in clean room
b) Second highest in gowning area
c) Lowest pressure in the hallways
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Clean Room Elements

4. Air Showers
a) Air showers are located between the gowning room and the clean room
b) Air showers possesses interlocking system to prevent both doors being
opened at the same time.
5. Service bay
a) Semi-clean area for storage materials and supplies
b) Service bay area has class 1000 or 10000
c) Bay area contains process chemical pipes, electrical power lines and clean
room supply materials

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 Lecture 1b
Clean Room Elements
6. Double-Door-Pass-Through
a) Simple double door boxes with a positive pressure filtered air with
interlocking device to prevent both doors from being opened at
the same time.
b) Air showers possesses interlocking system to prevent both doors
being opened at the same time.
7. Static Control
a) Static charges of up to 50,000 V may build up on wafers, storage
boxes, work surfaces or equipment

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 Lecture 1b
Clean Room Elements

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Controlling Static Charge

Eliminating Static Charge:

• Air ionizer: Neutralizes nonconductive materials

• Grounding of conducting surfaces
• Increasing conductivity of materials
• Humidity control
• Surface treatment with topical antistatic solutions

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Clean Room Elements

Use high efficiency particulate attenuation (HEPA) filters or Ultra-

Low-particulate (ULPA) filters:
• Allow passage of large volume of air at low velocity
• Low velocity contributes to cleanliness of the hood by not causing
air current, and also operators comfort.
• HEPA and ULPA filters efficiency: 99.9999+ % at 0.12 micron
particle size.
• Typical flow is 90-100 ft/min

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Types of Contamination in the Clean Room

1. Particulates
A: Silicon dust
B: Quartz dust
C: Atmospheric dust
D: Generated from the Personnel
E: Generated from the Equipment
2. Films

3. Trace Quantities of substances in

molecular or atomic form

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Definition of Clean Room Classifications

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1. Particulates

• Silicon dust
• Quartz dust
• Atmospheric dust
• Generated from the Personnel
• Generated from the Equipment
• Photo resist chunks
• Bacteria (from the DI water)

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1. Particulates
• Particle size must be 10 times smaller than the
minimum feature size, e.g. 0.3 µm feature size
device is vulnerable to 0.03 µm diameter particles.

• Killer Defects
1. Particles present in a critical part of the device
and destroy the functioning
2. Crystal defects and other process induced
problems

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Trace Metallic Impurities in some Liquid Chemicals

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2. Bacteria

• Can be defined as organisms that grow in water systems or surfaces

that are not cleaned regularly
• On semiconductor device, bacteria acts as particulate
contamination or may contribute unwanted metallic ions to the
device surface

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3. Films
Layers of foreign material on the wafer surface are the
source of film contaminants.

Residues from the resist development

Residues from the solvents
Oil films
Metallic and ionic contaminants
i) from the etchants
ii) from the resist stripper baths

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Gowning Procedure

Human are major source of contamination.

Components of a full body cover gowns include:

1: Body Suit (bunny suit!)

2: Gloves (Clean room type)
3: Hair Net and inner Cap
4: Hood
5: Booties (To cover the shoe cover!)

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Clean Room Gowns

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Applications of different Clean Room Gowns

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Operators in the state-of-the art Clean rooms

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You!! : In the Powell Clean Room

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Standard Mechanical Interface (SMIF)

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SMIF in Action for 300 mm Wafers

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Contamination Prevention Measures
”An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure”

• Use of Clean room class < 1

• Use of SMIF Concept on each Equipment
• Use of Local “mini environment”, in which through
use of UHP-N2,we can achieve clean room
classification less than 0.1
• Reduction in number of operators in the clean room

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 Lecture 1b
Clean Room Personnel

Personnel generated Contamination

• Normal Breathing No Particles
• Smokers Breath After Smoking 500%
• Sneezing 2000%
• Sitting Quietly 20%
• Rubbing Hands on Face 200%
• Walking 200%
• Stomping Foot on Floor 5000%

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Clean Room Personnel
Examples of human contaminants:
1. Flakes of dead hair
2. Normal skin flaking
3. Hair sprays
4. Cosmetics
5. Facial Hair
6. Exposed clothing

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 Lecture 1b
Deionized (DI) water

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Components of DI system

1. De gasifier units
2. Filters
3. Reverse Osmosis (RO)
4. Ion Exchange Unit
5. UV Irradiation Unit
6. Nitrogen unit
7. Total Organic Concentration (TOC) Unit

DI Water with Resistivity ~ 18 Mega ohm is

the purest water possible to obtain

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 Lecture 1b
Wafer Cleaning:
Wet Chemical removal of Film
Contaminants
• Front End Of the Line (FEOL) Cleaning
• Steps from the bare wafer all the way up to the
first metal contact cut.

• Back End Of the Line (BEOL) Cleaning

• Processes from the first metal contact cut to the end.

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 Lecture 1b
FEOL Wet Chemical Cleaning

RCA Clean:
Standard Clean – 1 (SC – 1)Removing all
organic films and some metal contaminants
(Ag, Ni, Au, Cu, Cd & Cr)

Standard Clean – 2 (SC – 2)Removing all

inorganic ions, alkali ions and heavy metals.

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RCA Clean

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RCA Clean

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Requirements for Si Wafer Cleaning Process

1. Effective Removal of all types surface contaminants

2. Not Etching or damaging Si and SiO2
3. Use of Contamination-free and volatilization chemicals
4. Relatively safe, simple and economical for production
applications.
5. Ecologically acceptable, free of toxic waste products
6. Implementable by a variety of techniques

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 Lecture 1b
Surface and Structural Analysis Techniques

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