|
Contact Anneal
The aluminum anneal is used to reduce contact resistance at the aluminum-silicon
interface.
During processing, any exposed silicon will rapidly oxidize (native oxide). This
oxide can increase the resistance of the contacts to the wafer.
Annealing is used to reduce the contact resistance, as well as recrystallize the
aluminum on the wafer. At elevated temperatures, aluminum will 'take' the oxygen
away from the SiO2 at the interface to form Al2O3.
This aluminum oxide is then incorporated into the bulk of the aluminum, leaving
the interface free of oxide.
Equipment
Lindbergh-Tempress 8500 manual anneal furnace chamber 8A
Supplies
N2
Operating parameters
- Furnace temperature:
475°C
- N2 flow: 100
- time:
10
minutes
Equipment/controls/tools locations
- Temperature controller: on the side of the furnace
- Gas panel: top rack in the back of the furnace
- Quartz handling: covered cart is to the left of the furnace, tongs are inside
- Boat: at the mouth of the furnace
Operating precautions
High temperatures
Use the high temperature gloves when handling hot equipment.
Contamination issues
- Quartware is easily contaminated by alkali ions. This leads to premature quartz
failure (breakage) due to devitrification as well as unstable MOSFET Vt.
Once quartz is contaminated, little can be done to remove the contamination.
- Always wear latex gloves when working with the furnace.
- N2 should always be flowing in standby to minimize contamination by backstreaming
of air in the room into the hot chamber.
Operating procedure
- Adjust N2 flow to 100 on the anneal furnace flowmeter
if it is not there
already.
- Load your wafer into the annealing furnace
for
10
at T =
475°C.
- When the
10
minutes have elapsed, remove the wafer from the furnace and place it
in your wafer carrier. Be sure that the boat pushrod is fully inserted into the
quartz tube so that it will not be broken. Return the empty boat to the front of
the furnace tube.
|
|
IC Process
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
Answers provided by this service may not be relevant to the materials presented in this website.
|