| 摘要 |
PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a new dry cleaning process for cleaning of an oxidized surface layer in an integrated circuit. SOLUTION: According to one embodiment, the method has steps of: providing a substrate containing a metal-containing barrier layer having the oxidized surface layer; exposing the oxidized surface layer to a flow of a first process gas containing plasma-excited argon gas to activate the oxidized surface layer; and applying substrate bias electric power during the step of exposing the oxidized surface layer to the flow of the first process gas. The method further includes a step of exposing the activated oxidized surface layer to a second process gas containing non-plasma-excited hydrogen gas. In addition to activating the oxidized surface layer, the step of exposing the oxidized surface layer to the flow of the first process gas facilitates reduction of the activated oxidized surface layer by the second process gas containing the hydrogen gas. A thickness of the metal-containing barrier layer is not substantially changed by the hybrid in-situ dry cleaning process. COPYRIGHT: (C)2011,JPO&INPIT |
