Future success in microelectronics will demand rapid innovation, rapid product introduction and ability to react to a change in technological and business climate quickly. These technological advances in integrated electronics will require development of flexible manufacturing technology for VLSI systems. However, the current approach of establishing factories for mass manufacturing of chips at a cost of more than 200 million dollars is detrimental to flexible manufacturing. We propose concepts of a micro factory which may be characterized by more economical small scale production, higher flexibility to accommodate many products on several processes, and faster turnaround and learning. In-situ multiprocessing equipment where several process steps can be done in sequence may be a key ingredient in this approach. For this environment to be flexible, the equipment must have ability to change processing environment, requiring extensive in-situ measurements and real time control. In this paper we describe the development of a novel single wafer Rapid Thermal Multiprocessing (RTM) reactor for next generation flexible VLSI manufacturing. This reactor will combine lamp heating, remote microwave plasma and photo processing in a single cold-wall chamber, with applications for multilayer in-situ growth and deposition of dielectrics, semiconductors and metals.
Future success in microelectronics will demand rapid inno vation, rapid product introduction and ability to react to a change quickly. These technological advancements in inte grated electronics will require development of flexible fabri cation technology for VLSI systems. In-situ multiprocessing equipment where several process steps can be done in se quence may be a key ingredient in this approach. For tms environment to be flexible ability to change processing envi rOIlnle.nt, extensive in-situ meaSllrernents and real tilDe COll� trol will be the essential requirements. In this paper we will describe the development of a novel single wafer multipro cessing reactor next generation flexible VLSI manufacturing by combining lamp heating, remote microwave plasma and photo processing in a single cold-wall chamber and for mul tilayer in-situ growth and deposition of dielectrics, semicon ductors and metals. IntroductionFor the past three decades, the semiconductor industry has made immense progress in increasing component densities and decreasing feature sizes. This progress in VLSI has been achieved throngh advances in equipment and fabrica tion technology, resulting in enormous economic benefits for cOIIlmodity products, for which manufacturing of one kind of chip is done in large quant.ities.As we look to the 1990's, it is clear that this mainstream approach has limitations with regard to the economic pro duction of small quantities, fast turnaround time and learn ing, and research on innovative tools and processes:• Processing is optimized by performing each step in the fabrication process on a separate piece of equipment, designed specifically for that step. With advances in technology, the number of steps to fabricate circuits is increasing. The resulting cost of setting up a factory to manufacture VLSI chips today is over 100 million dol lars, which forces the manufacturer to produce a certain minimum number of chips to remain profitable. • Efficiency is maximized by processing wafers in large batches. There are difficulties in efficiently tracking and "'Currently at Texas Instruments, Dallas 75 scheduling wafers when the variety of part numbers is very large. This is an important issue in the produc tion of logic for high end processors and where small quantities of a large variety of chips need to be fabri cated using different technologies. It is also important for rapid prototyping of chips, in order to accelerate the learning cycle for innovative devices and processes. • Variation is reduced by in-process and end-of-process monitoring. When there are several process parallleters to optimize, statistical techniques require hundreds of wafers to be processed. Wafer batching inhibits the de velopment and use of in.siiu monitoring to accelerate the learning curve. • The infrastructure of equipment vendors is focused on mass production. Research groups interested in devel oping innovative tools and processes are findin!':, there fore, that most commercial equipment is prohibitively expensive and lacks the desire...
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