No abstract

As 65nm technology in mass production and 45nm technology under development, post etch ash and cleaning faces new challenges with far more stringent requirements on surface cleanliness and materials loss. The introduction and integration of new materials, such as metal hard mask, creates additional requirements for wafer cleaning due to the occurrence of new defect modes related to metal hard mask. We have optimized a post etch ash process and developed a novel aqueous solution (AQ) based single wafer cleaning process to address these new defect modes. Physical characterization results and process integration electrical data are presented in this paper.