Systems and Methods to Control Sources of Atomic Species in a Deposition Process

摘要

Systems and methods as well as components and techniques can exhibit stable and accurate control of a deposition process by monitoring background-corrected deposition rates of an atomic species via atomic absorption (AA) spectroscopy. The systems and methods have high sensitivity and resolution in addition to extremely effective background correction and baseline drift removal, achieved in part by basing the background correction and baseline drift removal on analysis of resonant and non-resonant AA lines. The systems and methods can result in surprisingly short warm-up times and can drastically reduce the noise coming from the instruments and the surrounding environment.

主权项

1. A system for controlling a deposition process by monitoring background-corrected deposition rates of an atomic species via atomic absorption (AA) spectroscopy, the system comprising:
A source of the atomic species configured to provide the atomic species into a volume at a rate of output; A light source configured to emit light having at least one wavelength that is at least partially absorbed by the atomic species; Optical guides configured to direct a portion of the light as a reference beam to a spectrometer and another portion of the light as an AA sampling beam through the volume and then to the spectrometer; The spectrometer configured to spatially disperse according to wavelength the AA sampling beam emerging from the volume and the reference beam onto a two-dimensional detector, thereby yielding sampling spectral data and reference spectral data, respectively; A computational device configured to receive the sampling spectral data and the reference spectral data from the detector and programmed to quantify a non-resonant absorbance value (ANR) and a resonant absorbance value (AR) from the sampling and reference spectral data, to correct the AR value according to the ANR value at common moments in time, thereby yielding background-corrected absorbance values, and to determine background-corrected deposition rates of the atomic species based on a correlation between the background-corrected absorbance values and the rates of output; and a controller connected to the computational device in a feedback loop configuration, wherein the controller is configured to regulate the rate of output of the atomic species according to the background-corrected deposition rates.