Wafer cleaning apparatus

Details Wafer cleaning apparatus Wafer cleaning apparatus

2000-05-17

2003-09-09

Stinson, Frankie L. (Department: 1746)

Cleaning and liquid contact with solids

Apparatus

With means to movably mount or movably support the work or...

C134S153000, C134S902000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06615854

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a wafer cleaning apparatus for cleaning wafer, which are processed by various processing steps such as plating and chemical mechanical polishing.
2. Description of the Related Art
When metallic materials such as copper attach themselves to the surfaces and edges of semiconductor wafer electro-chemically as metallic copper, they become stable and cannot be removed by washing with pure water. Copper adhering in such a manner will diffuse into silicon wafer during heat treatment, and causes problems in device performances.
On the other hand, a copper seed layer is currently formed as a pretreatment for copper plating by sputtering copper (or by CVD) on the silicon wafer, and the trend is to apply the layer over the entire front surface of the wafer, because it is a more efficient use of the area. That is, as shown in
FIG. 1
, a barrier layer
80
is formed on the front surface of the wafer W extending to its edge section E, a Cu seed layer
83
is formed thereon, and a plating layer
85
is formed on the seed layer
83
.
However, when a Cu seed layer
83
of 100 nm, for example, is formed by sputtering on the entire front surface of the wafer W, a sputtered Cu layer is formed not only on the front surface of the wafer but a thin sputtered Cu layer is formed also on the edge section E of the wafer as shown in FIG.
2
. On the other hand, the formation of the plating layer
85
on the wafer W is carried out by sealing the outer peripheral section of the wafer W so as to prevent the plating layer from extending to the back surface of the wafer W. Therefore, the plating layer
85
can be formed only on the front surface of the wafer W not extending to the edge thereof, as shown in FIG.
2
. For this reason, a portion of the Cu seed layer
83
remains on the edge section E and in the vicinity thereof as a thin layer. The residual Cu layer in such places can detach and be removed from the wafer during transport or processing of plated wafers or chemically mechanically polished (CMP) wafers, thereby leading to a high probability of causing Cu crop-contamination.
Also, it is difficult to prevent Cu from adhering to the back surface and edge of the wafer even if the edge and the back surface are protected by sealing the outer periphery thereof.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention has been derived in view of the background problems outlined above, and an object of the present invention is to resolve such current problems and provide a wafer cleaning apparatus for completely cleaning surfaces of wafer processed by copper plating, a CMP process or so on.
The present invention provides an apparatus for cleaning front and back surfaces of a wafer while rotating the wafer that has been subjected to a fabrication process. The apparatus comprises: cleaning nozzles for spraying a cleaning solution, respectively, onto a front surface of the wafer that has been processed and onto a back surface thereof; and an etching nozzle for spraying an etching solution onto a vicinity of an outer periphery of the wafer.
According to cleaning the processed front surface of the wafer, particulate matter and detached copper are eliminated therefrom. According to cleaning the back surface of the wafer, particulate matter and/or copper adsorbed as metallic copper, are eliminated. And according to etching the edge portion of the wafer, it is possible to forcefully eliminate a thin copper film by etching.
As explained above, the present invention enables both sides and edges of the wafer to be cleaned at the same time as well as preventing potential device problems caused by metals, ouch as copper, adhering to the edge section of the wafer. That is, device performance problems caused by contamination from adhered metal on the edge section and back surface of the wafer, and problems of cross contamination caused by detached metal film from the copper formed on the edge section, are prevented. Thus, the invention provides beneficial effects of facilitating ideal cleaning of processed wafer that received various processing such as copper plating and a CMP process that follows the plating process.
The above and other objects, features, and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description when taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings which illustrate preferred embodiments of the present invention by way of example.


REFERENCES:
patent: 3953265 (1976-04-01), Hood
patent: 4439243 (1984-03-01), Titus
patent: 4489740 (1984-12-01), Rattan et al.
patent: 4510176 (1985-04-01), Cuthbert et al.
patent: 4518678 (1985-05-01), Allen
patent: 4732785 (1988-03-01), Brewer
patent: 4838289 (1989-06-01), Kottman et al.
patent: 4968375 (1990-11-01), Sato et al.
patent: 5176783 (1993-01-01), Yoshikawa
patent: 5349978 (1994-09-01), Sago et al.
patent: 5499733 (1996-03-01), Litvak
patent: 5634980 (1997-06-01), Tomita et al.
patent: 5688411 (1997-11-01), Kutsuzawa et al.
patent: 5706843 (1998-01-01), Matsuo
patent: 5723387 (1998-03-01), Chen
patent: 5783097 (1998-07-01), Lo et al.
patent: 5879577 (1999-03-01), Weng et al.
patent: 5897379 (1999-04-01), Ulrich et al.
patent: 6012966 (2000-01-01), Ban et al.
patent: 6027630 (2000-02-01), Cohen
patent: 6062288 (2000-05-01), Tateyama
patent: 6063232 (2000-05-01), Terasawa et al.
patent: 6099393 (2000-08-01), Katagiri et al.
patent: 6106907 (2000-08-01), Yoshikawa et al.
patent: 6110345 (2000-08-01), Iacoponi
patent: 6114254 (2000-09-01), Rolfson
patent: 6117778 (2000-09-01), Jones et al.
patent: 6140233 (2000-10-01), Kwag et al.
patent: 6165050 (2000-12-01), Ban et al.
patent: 6180020 (2001-01-01), Moriyama et al.
patent: 6254760 (2001-07-01), Shen et al.
patent: 6258220 (2001-07-01), Dordi et al.
patent: 6265323 (2001-07-01), Nakamura et al.
patent: 6265328 (2001-07-01), Henely et al.
patent: 6294059 (2001-09-01), Hongo et al.
patent: 6332835 (2001-12-01), Nishimura et al.
patent: 6333275 (2001-12-01), Mayer et al.
patent: 6380086 (2002-04-01), Robinson et al.
patent: 6387190 (2002-05-01), Aoki et al.
patent: 6413436 (2002-07-01), Aegerter et al.
patent: 41 09 955 (1992-10-01), None
patent: 1-253923 (1989-10-01), None
patent: 2-253620 (1990-10-01), None
patent: 2-272738 (1990-11-01), None
patent: 5-13322 (1993-01-01), None
patent: 6-124887 (1994-05-01), None
patent: 8-37143 (1996-06-01), None
“Method Of And Apparatus For Cleaning Substrate” Ichiro Katakabe et al., U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/679,305, filed Oct. 6, 2000.
“Method Of And Apparatus For Cleaning Substrate” Ichiro Katakabe et al., U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/390,600, filed Mar. 19, 2003.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

Rating

Wafer cleaning apparatus does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this patent.

If you have personal experience with Wafer cleaning apparatus, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Wafer cleaning apparatus will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFUS-PAI-O-3000917