Fabrication of Planar Heating Chuck Using Nichrome Thin Film as Heating Element for PECVD Equipment

Abstract

Improving semiconductor equipment and components is an important goal of semiconductor manufacture. Especially during the deposition process, the temperature of the wafer must be precisely controlled to form a uniform thin film. In the conventional plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) chuck, heating rate, and temperature uniformity are limited by the spiral pattern and volume of the heating element. To overcome the structural limitation of the heating element of conventional chuck, we tried to develop the planar heating chuck (PHC), a 6-inch PECVD chuck with a planar heating element based on NiCr thin film that would be a good candidate for rapidly and uniformly heating. The time for the temperature elevation from room temperature to 330 °C was 398 s. In a performance evaluation, the fabricated PHC successfully completed a SiO2 PECVD process.

Science-based, data-driven developments in plasma processing for material synthesis and device-integration technologies

“…187) The uniformity of the substrate temperature was controlled using a multizone heating system. [188][189][190][191] The temperature of the electrostatic chuck, used as a wafer susceptor, was monitored using a wireless-type on-wafer temperature monitoring system. 189) To understand the temperature results, the heat transfer characteristics of the ceramic puck for the electrostatic chuck, and the effects of different types of heating zones, such as multi-zone/singlezone heaters, 190) and the temperature uniformity of the ceramic puck 191,192) were investigated.…”