Coating apparatus – Gas or vapor deposition – With treating means
Patent
1990-01-26
1992-06-30
Bueker, Richard
Coating apparatus
Gas or vapor deposition
With treating means
118728, 118730, H01L 2100
Patent
active
051253593
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
This invention relates to a surface deposition or surface treatment reactor, permitting coating of substrates with thin films, or carrying out a surface treatment thereon. It provides in particular a chemical vapor deposition reactor ("chemical vapor deposition: CVD") and may in particular be applied to the production of electronic components or integrated circuits: coating of circuit boards with thin film conductors, semi-conductors or insulators (for example the formation or doping of epitaxial, polycrystalline or amorphous films of materials such as silicon, germanium, or gallium arsenide . . . ). The reactor according to the invention may also be used for carrying out nitriding, oxidizing or other surface treatments on surfaces of substrates or even for carrying out deposition by cathode sputtering . . . .
For example, the chemical vapor deposition process is used presently for depositing various materials on substrates in numerous applications: electronic fields as mentioned above, mechanical fields for producing corrosion resistant coatings or abrasion resistant coatings or in the nuclear field. This process which generally implies a thermal decomposition, a chemical oxidation or a chemical reduction consists in causing a gas phase to circulate at low pressure in contact with the substrates to be coated at a precise temperature appropriate to the operation (most frequently between 400.degree. C. and 800.degree. C.); this gas phase constitutes a vector gas containing the reactive components.
The characteristics of the deposits obtained (composition, uniformity . . . ) are influenced by several factors and in particular by the distribution of the temperature and by the flow characteristics at the level of the substrates. The control of the temperature is generally a fundamental condition for improving the deposits achieved and, in numerous applications, a variation of several degrees is sufficient to disturb the results obtained.
For improving the profitability of the process, it is desireable to treat on each pass a large number of substrates especially in the electronic field where they are presented in the form of thin circular plates, and the conventional CVD reactors, shown for example in German patent 3,134,702, comprise an enclosure of an elongated shape in which a series of substrates are arranged side by side from one end of the enclosure, where the gas phase is introduced, to the opposite end where said gas phase is withdrawn. However, it is not possible in this type of reactor to precisely improve the coatings obtained on all of the substrates when the number becomes very great (for example over a hundred for electronic circuit boards). In effect, the substrates are swept successively by the gas flow which becomes depleted in reactive components during its passage, leading to a different treatment depending on the placement of the substrate.
To overcome the .deficiency mentioned above, reactors have been conceived in which the gas phase sweeps all of the substrates simultaneously, and not successively. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,524,719 and European patent 0,137,702 describe a reactor in which the substrates are arranged in a reaction chamber in a vertical position parallel to the path of the CVD gas. However, the uniformity of the temperature in the reaction chamber being very difficult to control in this type of reactors, and the capacity of such reaction chamber being necessarily low, the number of substrates treated is very limited, in order to avoid gas flows in the chamber becoming completely uncontrollable and unacceptable temperature gradients appearing.
It should be noted that Japanese patent JP-A-60.184679 describes a reactor comprising two chambers constituting a first enclosure which is inserted into a second enclosure in the form of a hood: the first enclosure forms the reaction chamber and contains the substrate and the heating means; a gas distributor with several tubes is provided along the axis of the two enclosures and may be displaced axially to permit distribution of th
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Barale Gilbert
Couderc Jean-Pierre
Gachen Christian
Izard Jean-Claude
Morancho Roland
Bueker Richard
Cent. Natl. Recherche Scientifique
Dutton, Jr. Harold H.
Goudreau George A.
Institut National de Rechereche Chimique Applique
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