Currently available data suggest that most of the energy and material consumption related to the production of an integrated circuit is due to the wafer fabrication process. The complexity of wafer manufacturing, requiring hundreds of steps that vary from product to product and from facility to facility and which change every few years, has discouraged the development of material, energy, and emission inventory modules for the purpose of insertion into life cycle assessments. To address this difficulty, a flexible, process-based system for estimating material requirements, energy requirements, and emissions in wafer fabrication has been developed. The method accounts for mass and energy use atthe unit operation level. Parametric unit operation modules have been developed that can be used to predict changes in inventory as the result of changes in product design, equipment selection, or process flow. A case study of the application of the modules is given for energy consumption, but a similar methodology can be used for materials, individually or aggregated.
The increase in gate leakage current and boron penetration are major problems for scaled gate dielectrics in advanced device technology. We have demonstrated, for the first time, reduction in gate leakage current and strong resistance to boron penetration when Jet Vapor Deposition (JVD) nitride is used as a gate dielectric in an advanced CMOS process. JVD nitride provides a robust interface and well behaved bulk properties, MOSFET characteristics, and ring oscillator performance.Process optimization and manufacturing issues remain to be addressed.
As MOSFET dimensions are aggressively scaled, minimizing the thermal budget becomes critical for limiting the diffusion of channel profiles. Unfortunately, high quality dielectrics with low deposition temperatures have not been readily available. Typical room temperature dielectrics are porous and electrically leaky. A promising technique for low temperature dielectric deposition is Jet Vapor Deposition (JVD). [1] Two coaxial quartz nozzles spray the process gases to the substrate surface at super-sonic speeds while a microwave cavity generates a plasma in the nozzle. [2] We have successfully deposited silicon nitride films using SiH4/He and N2/He gas mixtures. These are the first reported JVD results on 200 mm wafers.
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