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The design of gas cluster ion beam (GCIB) equipment is complicated by a number of issues unique to such beams. lon charge and mass are typically not known but instead follow rather broad distributions. Space charge becomes important at much lower current levels than in implant equipment due to the very high mass of the ions. The beam, itself, transports a significant amount of gas and this gas load must be taken into account in the design. The novel issues of GCIB are discussed here and solutions are presented.

Gas Cluster ion beams (GCIB) are finding many applications for surface smoothing and etching of a variety of materials including semiconductors. Epion has developed commercial processing equipment, which makes possible practical application of GCIB beams for production processes. This equipment includes automatic recipe setup and tracking. Process uniformity and repeatability has been demonstrated to be better than 1%. Charge control keeps substrate charging to less than ±6 v. Throughputs as high as 10 W/hr are achievable with 200 mm wafers.

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Production capable infusion processing equipment for ultra shallow doping and surface engineering is now available. Shrinking device dimensions require extremely shallow doping for many applications. New techniques are necessary in order to manufacture Source Drain Extensions (SDE) and for DRAM poly doping. Channel engineering is required for advanced gates. High throughput, tight process control and low contamination are required from the process equipment. Epion Corporation has developed the nFusion™ 300mm doping system that offers solutions for these applications. The production worthiness is characterized with high doping rates, long term repeatability, depth control and low contamination.