Dry cleaning of semiconductor processing chambers.

摘要

In accordance with the disclosure, the plasma dry cleaning rate of the walls of semiconductor process chamber (102) can be improved by placing a non-gaseous dry cleaning enhancement material in the position which was occupied by the workpiece (104) during semiconductor processing. The non-gaseous dry cleaning enhancement materials is either capable of generating dry cleaning reactive species and/or of reducing the consumption of the dry cleaning reactive species generated from the plasma gas feed (108) to the process chamber. When process chamber non-volatile contaminant deposits are removed from plasma process chamber surfaces during plasma dry cleaning by placing a non-gaseous source of reactive-species-generating material within the plasma process chamber, the non-gaseous source of reactive-species-generating material need not be located upon or adjacent the workpiece support plateform: however, this location provides excellent cleaning results in typical process chamber designs.