Manufacturer:Tegal
Refurbished by:Allwin21 Corp
Model:Tegal 901e
Cassette To Cassette In-line Single Wafer Plasma Etcher.
Capability to etch vias and contacts with anisotropic or sloped profiles.
For etching silicon dioxide, silicon nitrides, and polyimides.
Can handle wafers from up to 6 in.
Microprocessor control.
208 V, 50/60 Hz.
Tegal 900 series Plasma/RIE etch System are used by the Semiconductor Industry for integrated circuit fabrication. The system are used in one part of the sequence of manufacturing steps that transfer a pattern formed from a layer of photosensitive material, the photoresist, to a layer that makes up a permanent part of the final device. The process of defining a pattern with photoresist known as photolithography, while the etch process transfers the photoresist pattern to the permanent layer.
Tegal 900 Series systems deliver highly reliable, repeatable results in etching a variety of films used to manufacture semiconductor, telecommunications and optoelectronics devices, flat panel displays and thin film magnetic heads.
Tegal 901e,are designed around a production-proven wafer transport design that can accommodate 75 mm to 150 mm round silicon, GaAs, InP, and dielectric material substrates. The transport can also be configured to accommodate rectangular substrates up to 125 mm on a side.
Typical Applications for Tegal 901e:
1. Nitride etch,
2. Photoresist Descum,
3. Polyimide and BCB etches,
4. Zero Layer Etch,
5. Backside Etch,
6. Isotropic Oxide Etch,
7. Non-critical Polysilicon Etch
8. Titanium/Tantalum Alloy Etch.
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Etching is used in microfabrication to chemically remove layers from the surface of a wafer during manufacturing. Etching is a critically important process module, and every wafer undergoes many etching steps before it is complete.
If the etch is intended to make a cavity in a material, the depth of the cavity may be controlled approximately using the etching time and the known etch rate. More often, though, etching must entirely remove the top layer of a multilayer structure, without damaging the underlying or masking layers. The etching system's ability to do this depends on the ratio of etch rates in the two materials (selectivity).
Some etches undercut the masking layer and form cavities with sloping sidewalls. The distance of undercutting is called bias. Etchants with large bias are called isotropic.
Modern VLSI processes avoid wet etching, and use plasma etching instead. Plasma systems can operate in several modes by adjusting the parameters of the plasma. Ordinary plasma etching operates between 0.1 and 5 Torr. (This unit of pressure, commonly used in vacuum engineering, equals approximately 133.3 pascals) The plasma produces energetic free radicals, neutrally charged, that react at the surface of the wafer. Since neutral particles attack the wafer from all angles, this process is isotropic.
The source gas for the plasma usually contains small molecules rich in chlorine or fluorine. For instance, carbon tetrachloride (CCl4) etches silicon and aluminium, and trifluoromethane etches silicon dioxide and silicon nitride. A plasma containing oxygen is used to oxidize ("ash") photoresist and facilitate its removal.
