Radiant energy – Irradiation of objects or material – Irradiation of semiconductor devices
Reexamination Certificate
1999-03-26
2001-09-18
Anderson, Bruce (Department: 2881)
Radiant energy
Irradiation of objects or material
Irradiation of semiconductor devices
C250S492200, C250S493100, C250S42300F, C250S440110, C250S3960ML
Reexamination Certificate
active
06291827
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an insulating apparatus, and more especially, to an insulating apparatus used in a connecting wire of an suppression electrode of an ion implanter.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Ion implantation is a widely used technique in the semiconductor industry, in which energetic, charged atoms or molecules are directly introduced into a substrate. In an integrated circuit fabrication, ion implantation is primarily used to add dopant ions into the surface of silicon wafers. Most of the impurity-doped regions, such as N-type and P-type well regions, source and drain regions, channel stop regions, and doped polysilicon electrode, can be fabricated by ion implantation, with or without the process of drive-in.
Typically, an ion implanter system, which is used to carried out the ion implantation process, comprises a ion source, an extraction device, a mass analysis, an accelerator, a scanning system, and other attached equipment such as gas delivery system, high vacuum system, and so on. In this ion implanter system, the ion source, which is generally an arc chamber, is used to ionize the source gases to form the ion gases. The ionized gases are extracted from the source chamber by an extraction electrode assembly. The extracted ion beam passes by a mass analysis, and the ions of undesired species are filtered out according to their masses. The accelerator creates an acceleration field to increase the ion energy to a desired level, and the scanning system distributes the ions uniformly over the target.
FIG. 1
depicts a portion of an ion implanter, including an ion source as an arc chamber
10
and an extraction electrode assembly
20
. The arc chamber
10
is basically a DC plasma generator, which accesses source gases from a gas feeding system not shown in the figure. The source gases are ionized in the arc chamber
10
through collision with electrons from an arc discharge, which is typically a hot filament. After the ionized plasma gases is generated, the extraction electrode assembly
20
is applied to extract the ionized gases out from the arc chamber
10
.
The extraction electrode assembly
20
consists essentially of an extraction electrode
22
and a suppression electrode
24
, with proper insulator deposed between them. The extraction electrode
22
is grounded to provide a voltage relatively lower than that of the arc chamber, which usually maintains at the level of tens of kilo voltage during operation. The positive ions in the arc chamber are therefore attracted by the lower voltage and move toward the extraction electrode
22
out from the arc chamber
10
. Being adjusted and focused, the extracted ion beam passes the extraction electrode assembly
20
through a slit
26
therein, with the direction indicated by the arrow
30
, and then flow toward the mass analysis and accelerator disposed downstream.
To focus and adjust the extracted ion beam, a suppression power with high negative voltage of about −1.8 KV is applied to the suppression electrode
24
deposed in the extraction electrode assembly
20
. The suppression electrode
24
typically comprises a graphite plate
34
, a metal plate
36
and a conductive rod assembly
38
connecting between them. The graphite plate
34
can provide the protection to the metal from the attack of the extracted ions to prevent damages and the generation of X-ray. With the electric field created by the suppression voltage, the extracted ion beam can be adjusted and prevented from blow-up (in the other words, be focused), and the arrival of unwanted electrons to the linear acceleration area, which is created by the accelerator downstream, can be suppressed.
To implement the focusing of the extracted ion beam, the suppression electrode
24
is secured to the extraction electrode assembly
20
as an integral device, and a supporting arm
32
is mounted to the grounded extraction electrode
22
, to provide support, grounded connection, and the capability of position adjustment. When the supporting arm
32
moves, the positions of the electrodes, and thus the slit
26
and the suppression electric field is regulated to adjust the ion beam.
For providing suppression power to the suppression electrode
24
, a conductive line
50
extends from a power source
60
to the suppression electrode
24
, in connection with one of the conductive rods
38
. The conductive line
50
is typically a coil with a certain cross section area. In the high-energy ion implanter EATON HE from EATON Inc., the conductive line
50
of coil type is disposed across the supporting arm
32
as shown in FIG.
2
. In this configuration, the conductive line
50
is easy to form a short circuit with the grounded supporting arm
32
, when the supporting arm
32
is operated to adjust the extraction electrode assemble
20
. Once the short circuit phenomenon occurs, the suppression current will become very large, and the ion beam can not be focused any more. The implanter thus goes wrong. To set the machine right, it needs to shutdown the machine, vent the chamber pressure to atmosphere, and disassembly the electrode to adjust the power wire. These works takes a lot of time and will cause great loss of efficiency.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention proposes a novel insulating apparatus for a conductive line. The proposed insulating apparatus can be applied to various conductive lines with different shapes. A novel connecting configuration between the power source and the suppression electrode of an ion implanter is also disclosed. The problem of short circuit can be solved by the present insulating apparatus with the novel connecting configuration.
The present invention proposes an insulating apparatus deposed on a conductive line, which comprises a plurality of insulator rings worn on the conductive line in series, wherein the insulator rings are annular cylinders. Each of the annular cylinders has an inner diameter equal to or larger than the outer diameter of the conductive line, and has an outer diameter larger than the inner diameter of the ones next to it. In addition, each of the annular cylinders has a length sized according to the desired flexibility of the conductive line.
REFERENCES:
patent: 5483077 (1996-01-01), Glavish
patent: 5959396 (1999-09-01), Moreshead et al.
patent: 6151527 (2000-11-01), Boutos
Huang Fu-chih
Tsai Dong-Tay
Tsai Pei-Wei
Tseng Hua-Jen
Anderson Bruce
Mosel Vitelic Inc.
Nath & Associates PLLC
Novick Harold L.
Wells Nikita
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