The Process of Plasma Chemical Photoresist Film Ashing from the Surface of Silicon Wafers

At present, the research for finding new technical methods of treating materials with plasma, including the development of energy and resource saving technologies for microelectronic manufacturing, is particularly actual.In order to improve the efficiency of microwave plasma chemical ashing of photoresist films from the surface of silicon wafers a two-stage process of treating was developed. The idea of the developed process is that wafers coated with photoresist are pre-heated by microwave energy. This occurs because the microwave energy initially is not spent on the excitation and maintenance of a microwave discharge but it is absorbed by silicon wafers which have a high tangent of dielectric losses. During the next step after the excitation of the microwave discharge the interaction of oxygen plasma with a pre-heated photoresist films proceeds more intensively. The delay of the start of plasma forming process in the vacuum chamber of a plasmatron with respect to the beginning of microwave energy generation by a magnetron leads to the increase of the total rate of photoresist ashing from the surface of silicon wafers approximately 1.7 times. The advantage of this method of microwave plasma chemical processing of semi-conductor wafers is the possibility of intensifying the process without changing the design of microwave discharge module and without increasing the input microwave power supplied into the discharge.