Oxidation Lithography & Etching Ion Implantation Annealing & Diffusion Introduction Silicon Growth & Wafer Quartz, or silica, consists of silicon dioxide Sand contains many tiny grains of quartz Silicon can be artificially produced by combining silica and carbon in electric furnace Gives polycrystalline silicon (multitude of crystals) Practical integrated circuits can only be fabricated from single-crystal material Silicon Crystal & Growth Growth
A solid seed crystal is rotated and slowly extracted from a pool of molten Si. Requires careful control to give crystals desired purity and dimensions. Czochralski process is a technique in making single-crystal silicon. Wafer Manufacturing The silicon crystal is sliced in ingot by using a diamond-tipped saw into thin wafers Sorted by thickness Damaged wafers removed during lapping Etch wafers in chemical to remove any remaining crystal damage Polishing smoothes uneven surface left by sawing process Oxidation of Silicon SiO 2 growth is a key process step in manufacturing all Si devices - Thick (~1m) oxides are used for field oxides (isolate devices from one another ) - Thin gate oxides (~100 ) control MOS devices - Sacrificial layers are grown and removed to clean up surfaces The stability and ease of SiO 2 formation is one of the reasons that Si replaces Ge as the semiconductor of choice.
The simplest method of producing an oxide layer consists of heating a silicon wafer in an oxidizing atmosphere. Dry oxide - Pure dry oxygen is employed Si + O 2 SiO 2
Disadvantage - Dry oxide grows very slowly. Advantage - Oxide layers are very uniform. - Relatively few defects exist at the oxide- silicon interface. - It has especially low surface state charges and thus make ideal dielectrics. Wet oxide - Same way as dry oxides, but steam is injected Si +2H 2 O SiO 2 + 2H 2 Disadvantage -Hydrogen atoms liberated by the decomposition of the water molecules produce imperfections that may degrade the oxide quality. Advantage -Wet oxide grows fast. -Useful to grow a thick layer of field oxide. Oxidation of Silicon Si Wafers O 2 N 2 H 2 O or TCE(trichloroethylene) Quartz tube Resistance-heated furnace Flow controller Oxidation of Silicon Estimation (a) How long does it take to grow 0.1m of dry oxide at 1000 o C ? (b) How long will it take to grow 0.2m of oxide at 900 o C in a wet ambient ? Solution: (a) From the 1000 o C dry curve, it takes 2.5 hr to grow 0.1m of oxide. (b) Use the 900 o C wet curve only. It would have taken 0.7hr to grow the 0.1 m oxide and 2.4hr to grow 0.3 m oxide from bare silicon. The answer is 2.4hr0.7hr = 1.7hr.