Focused ion beam ͑FIB͒ methodologies for successfully milling copper ͑U.S. Patent No. 6,322,672 B1͒ have been demonstrated. Approaches to milling copper ͑Cu͒ are required because standard FIB mill procedures produce rough, uneven cuts that are unsuitable for circuit edits, a principal FIB function. Efforts to develop gas assisted etching ͑GAE͒ processes which would smoothly mill Cu failed because Cu halides are not volatile and remain on the substrate as corrosive electrically conductive debris. Single crystal studies show that Cu grains with different crystal orientations vary in mill rate by as much as 4ϫ. Moreover, the ͑110͒ crystal orientation, which mills most slowly, forms a Cu 3 Ga phase when milled with a focused Ga ion beam. This phase is particularly resistant to milling and, in polycrystalline Cu, propagates during the milling operation, contributing to the uneven trench profiles. CoppeRx, a novel scan strategy, cleanly and uniformly removes polycrystalline Cu with minimal damage to the underlying dielectric. CoppeRx minimizes the formation and propagation of the Cu 3 Ga phase and equalizes the etch rates of the Cu crystal orientations. The CoppeRx strategy includes the milling of an ''egg crate'' topography to minimize the propagation of the Cu 3 Ga phase and the creation of a heavy atom sacrificial layer of the Cu surface ͑U.S. Patent Application No. 20010053605͒ which scatters the incident Ga ion beam, thereby reducing the channeling influence on Cu milling rates. This heavy atom layer is created by flowing W͑CO͒ 6 vapor during the FIB milling process. The CoppeRx scan strategy is especially beneficial for milling thick ͑Ͼ0.8 m͒ Cu structures with large, prominent grains. Because Cu interconnect lines are relatively thin ͑Ͻ0.4 -0.5 m͒, grain-related milling roughness is less of a problem. The CoppeRx egg crate topography and W scattering layer are not required. Instead, the successful cutting of 40 ohm Cu interconnect lines to produce Ͼ20 M ohm open circuits is achieved by flowing O 2 or H 2 O during the milling process ͑U.S. Patent No. 6,322,672B1͒. The O 2 /H 2 O flow smoothes the Cu milling by producing an amorphous surface oxide, thereby reducing channeling, and by enhancing the etch selectivity for Cu relative to the surrounding and underlying SiO 2 based dielectric. These interconnect cuts have been routinely done at the bottom of high aspect ratio holes ͑e.g., 1ϫ1ϫ9 m͒.
The result of applying normal xenon ion beam milling combined with patented DX chemistry to delayer state-of-theart commercial-grade 14nm finFETs has been demonstrated in a Helios Plasma FIB DualBeam™. AFM, Conductive-AFM and nano-probing with the Hyperion Atomic Force nanoProber™ were used to confirm the capability of the Helios PFIB DualBeam to delayer samples from metal-6 down to metal-0/local interconnect layer and in under two hours produce a sample that is compatible with the fault isolation, redetection, and characterization capabilities of the AFP. IV (current-voltage) curves were obtained from representative metal-0 contacts exposed by the PFIB+DX delayering process and no degradation to device parameters was uncovered in the experiments that were run. Compared to mechanically delayering samples, the many benefits of using the PFIB+DX process to delayer samples for nano-probing were conclusively demonstrated. Such benefits, include sitespecificity, precise control over the amount of material removed, >100μm square DUT (device under test) area, nm-scale flatness over the DUT area, nm-scale topography between contacts and the surrounding ILD, uniform conductivity across the DUT area, all with no obvious detrimental effects on typical DC device parameters measured by nano-probing.
Simple expressions are derived to evaluate the lasing condition and power characteristics of unstableresonator semiconductor lasers (URSL's). The gain-loss characteristics of several quantum-well materials are summarized and found to be important for URSL design considerations. To optimize URSL performance, the cavity length needs to approach an optimum value, which varies from ~300 µm for an InGaAs/GaAs graded-index separate-confinement-heterostructure single-quantum-well (GRINSCHSQW) to ~1000 µm for GaInP/AlGaInP GRINSCH-SQW materials. A set of high-power (1-W, double-mirror, pulsed) 660-nm wavelength GaInP/AlGaInP URSL's with magnification of 2.5 were fabricated using focused-ion-beam micromachining technology. The brightness of a 300 µm × 1500 µm URSL approaches 320 MW cm(-2) Sr(-1) at a pump current of 3000 mA.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.