INDUSTRY GaAs MANUFACTURING
The LAPECVD tool can accommodate eight 4-inch wafers
Plasma Therm, a manufacturer of plasma etch and deposition tools, and RFMD, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of compound semiconductor chips.
A strong relationship between these companies has been fundamental to driving a substantial increase in the productivity of a set of large-area, plasma-enhanced CVD tools. These tools are used to deposit SiNx
films, which are needed for interlayer
dielectrics, passivation layers, hermetic encapsulation and electrical isolation, and also serve as an inter-metal dielectric for MIM capacitors and as a capping layer for thermal annealing. Highlights of this continuing collaboration include: development and commercialization of a large area tool; an indexer upgrade that led to a substantial reduction in mishandled wafers, which in turn trimmed the time spent on cleaning and maintenance of the reactor; and the optimization of an in-situ clean that reduces yield-impacting particles, while cutting consumable expenditure and down time. On top of this, the partnership has worked
together to improve showerhead manufacturing, which has led to greater levels of uniformity for the films deposited by the tool.
Product development Plasma-Therm has a long history in the development and production of multi-wafer PECVD systems. In 1995, it launched the VLR-PECVD, a tool with an 11-inch electrode that could process four 4-inch wafers in batch mode.
Following a request from RFMD for a higher throughput tool that could be upgraded to handle 6-inch wafers, Plasma Therm’s engineers at Saint Petersburg, Florida, re-designed the system in 1999. This reactor – which featured a larger chamber, electrode and chamber fixturing, was designated the large-area (LA) PECVD tool. It could simultaneously process eight 4-inch wafers or five 6-inch wafers, so it offered a 42 percent increase in productivity over its predecessor. This equates to processing 5 more wafers per hour, or nearly 44,000 more wafers per year.
June 2013
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