Semiconductor device manufacturing: process – Chemical etching – Vapor phase etching
Reexamination Certificate
2002-11-01
2008-07-15
Goudreau, George A. (Department: 1792)
Semiconductor device manufacturing: process
Chemical etching
Vapor phase etching
C438S007000, C438S008000, C438S009000, C438S016000, C216S060000
Reexamination Certificate
active
07399711
ABSTRACT:
A method of controlling a recess etch process for a multilayered substrate having a trench therein and a column of material deposited in the trench includes determining a first dimension from a surface of the substrate to a reference point in the substrate by obtaining a measured net reflectance of at least a portion of the substrate including the trench, computing a modeled net reflectance of the portion of the substrate as a weighted incoherent sum of reflectances from n≧1 different regions constituting the portion of the substrate, determining a set of parameters that provides a close match between the measured net reflectance and the modeled net reflectance, and extracting the first dimension from the set of parameters; computing an endpoint of the process as a function of the first dimension and a desired recess depth measured from the reference point; and etching down from a surface of the column of material until the endpoint is reached.
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G. B. Smith, &#
Perry Andrew J.
Venugopal Vijayakumar C.
Goudreau George A.
IP Strategy Group, P.C.
Lam Research Corporation
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