Conventional Silicon Processing

Micromachining, Microfabrication.
Why silicon? Abundant, cheap, easy to process.
Silicon planar Integrated Circuit (IC) Fabrication:
• Crystal growth and epitaxy
• Oxidation and film deposition
• Diffusion or implantation of dopants
• Lithography and etching
• Metallization and wire bonding
• Testing and encapsulation
 Film Deposition
• Deposition:
Thin films are essential building materials in semiconductor
microsensors. Usually 0.05-5 μm thick. Generally physical and
chemical deposition means are used.
A Spin Casting:
Thin film material is in solution in a volatile liquid solvent.
• The dissolved material is poured on the wafer.
• Wafer is rotated at high speed
• The volatile solvent evaporates, leaving a uniform thin layer of solid
material. Used for deposition of organic materials such as
photosensitive resists polyimides and inorganic spin-on glasses.
• Thickness of the film depends on:
1. Degree of solubility
2. Viscosity
3. Spin speed
Advantages
1. Planarizes small irregularities on surface
2. Simple
3. Inexpensive
Disadvantages
1. Does not yield a continuos film across steps higher than two to three
times the film thickness.
2. Suffers from film shrinkage after bake, which causes a high-stress state.
3. Films tend to be less dense and therefore more susceptible to chemical
attack.
Evaporation:
• Film thickness is determined by:
1. The time the shutter is opened.
2. Vapor pressure of the material which determines the evaporation rate.
• Advantages:
1. Relatively simple and inexpensive.
2. Works great for metal films with low melting point (aluminum, gold,
copper).
Disadvantages
1. Hard to deposit films with high melting point such as refractory metals
(tungsten).
2. Since a point source is used, there might be shadow effects.
3. Coverage is determined by the mobility of the evaporated molecules on
the surface.
4. Only thin layers can be obtained. Less than 1μ.
 Sputtering
This overcomes many problems associated with thermal
evaporation.
First vacuum chamber is evacuated to 10-7-10-8 Torr. Then Ar or He is let into the
chamber. Then plasma is formed using dc or rf power supply. Target is cathode.
Wafers
(substrates) are anode. The ions of plasma take material of the target, which lands
on the
substrate coating a thin film.

Advantages:
1. Better step coverage than evaporation. Especially if magnetic fields are introduced
into the plasma.
2. Almost all materials can be sputtered.
3. Can use more than one target: co-sputtering.
4. Can use multiple substrates: mass production.

Disadvantages:
1. More complicated than evaporation.
 Reactive Growth
In the previous methods, no chemical reaction occurs between the substrate and
the deposited thin film. In reactive growth, a chemically reactive species
combines with the substrate to form a new film.
1. Simple. Can be done in a furnace with reactive gases.
2. Excellent quality of thin film.
Disadvantages:
1. Due to diffusion rate limitation of the reactive species, only thin films are
possible.
Thin film formation rate depends on:
a. Reaction rate
b. Diffusion rate of the reactive species

Limited to thin films. <1μm.

Chemical Vapor Deposition: (CVD)
• In CVD, gas is broken down to its species, some of which
nucleate on the substrate,forming a film. It is done in a
furnace.
• First, furnace is heated in inert gas (like N2). When the
deposition temperature is reached, N2 is turned off, and the
reactive gas is introduced.
• Many different thin films can be deposited using this
method, including polycrystalline silicon, silicon nitride,
silicon dioxide and refractory metals like tungsten.
• Most CVD films are amorphous or polycrystalline. However, a
special CVD called epitaxial CVD grows crystalline films.
CVD
 Plasma Enhanced CVD (PECVD):
• The gas is decomposed into components with the aid of plasma which speeds up the
process. While the gas containing the atomic components of the film is introduced
into the deposition chamber, the plasma is ignited with a RF source creating ionized
species.
Some of these species deposit on the substrate.
• Advantages:
1. Faster deposition rate.
2. Can be done at lower temperatures than regular CVD.
• Disadvantages:
1. Quality of thin film is usually not good. Might contain cracks, voids.
2. Stoichiometry of the film usually varies due to trapped by-products like H2.
This technique is used to deposit intermetal dielectric layers and organic layers
where polymers can be obtained from monomers through plasma. wafer boat
 Lithography
• The way patterns are defined on thin films is
called Lithography. If light is used to
transfer patterns from a mask on to a wafer,
then this special kind of lithography is called
photolithography. This is analogous to the
transferring images from a negative to a
photosensitive paper to make photographs
 Alignment and Exposure

• Most of the time, there are multiple lithographic and etching

processes where the features
of the devices have to be aligned. Alignment keys on the
mask and the wafer are used for this.
• Steppers align and project the image of each die on the
wafer one at a time. Contact aligners expose the wafer at the
same time.
• In MEMS technology, there are times when lithography and
patterning are required on both sides of the wafer. Then
both masks have to be aligned to the wafer.
Alignment and Exposure
 Etching
• A kind of patterning technique. Wet chemical etching or dry (plasma)etching can
be used.
A Wet Chemical Etching:
• In wet chemical etching, wafer with patterned photoresist is immersed in an
etchant, usually an acid. Agitation or heat can be used to speed up the etching.
The etchant
• removes the thin film not protected by the photoresist. The thin film under
photoresist remains.

• Most etchants are isotropic, (equal etch rate in all directions).

• The chemical etch has to be matched to the film to be etched.

Wet Chemical Etching:

Dry Etching or Plasma Etching

The chemical etchant is in plasma
 Dry Etching or Plasma Etching

Etchant gases are fed into a vacuum chamber at a moderately low

pressure Torr. Torr
A rf voltage is used to create plasma that contains free radicals and
ionized species.
Free radicals react with thin film to remove the thin film.
Plasma etching is anisotropic and therefore preferred in MEMS
fabrication.

Parameters that affect the quality of plasma etch:

1. Pressure
2. Temperature
3. Frequency of RF source
4. Magnetic Field (if any)
 Lift Off

This is another patterning technique. Photoresist is deposited first

and then the thin film to be patterned. Mostly used for thin metal
films.
Advantages:
1. No need to match the etchant to the specific thin film.
The process steps work for all
thin metals.
2. Sharp, straight edges.

Disadvantages:
1. Mechanical, does not work on “elastic” films. Works best
only on thin metal films.
 Diffusion and Ion Implantation
To achieve required conductivity in silicon, controlled amounts of
dopants are introduced
and diffused into the wafer.

p -type Boron
n -type Arsenic or Phosphorus.

Ion Implantation:
Here charged ions are accelerated in vacuum and imbedded into
the wafer. Usually the resultant dopant profile is Gaussian.