Ex situ coating of chamber components for semiconductor processing

US11365479B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• Lam Research Corporation · US

Inventors

• Damodar Rajaram Shanbhag · Beaverton, US
• Guangbi Yuan · Beaverton, US
• Thadeous Bamford · Portland, US
• Curtis Bailey · West Linn, US
• Tony Kaushal · Campbell, US
• Krishna Birru · Sunnyvale, US
• William Schlosser · Tigard, US
• Bo Gong · Sherwood, US
• Huatan Qiu · Lake Oswego, US
• Fengyuan Lai · Troy, US
• Leonard Wai Fung Kho · San Francisco, US
• Anand Chandrashekar · Sunnyvale, US
• Andrew H. Breninger · Hillsboro, US
• Chen-Hua Hsu · Sherwood, US
• Geoffrey Hohn · Portland, US
• Gang Liu · Fremont, US
• Rohit Khare · Fremont, US

Key dates

• Filing date: Jul 22, 2020
• Grant date: Jun 21, 2022
• Expiry date: Jul 22, 2040

Classification

• Technology area (CPC H): Electricity
• CPC primary: H01J37/32862
• WIPO field: Surface technology, coating
• WIPO sector: Chemistry

Abstract

Forming a protective coating ex situ in an atomic layer deposition process to coat one or more chamber components subsequently installed in a reaction chamber provides a number of benefits over more conventional coating methods such as in situ deposition of an undercoat. In certain cases the protective coating may have a particular composition such as aluminum oxide, aluminum fluoride, aluminum nitride, yttrium oxide, and/or yttrium fluoride. The protective coating may help reduce contamination on wafers processed using the coated chamber component. Further, the protective coating may act to stabilize the processing conditions within the reaction chamber, thereby achieving very stable/uniform processing results over the course of processing many batches of wafers, and minimizing radical loss. Also described are a number of techniques that may be used to restore the protective coating after the coated chamber component is used to process semiconductor wafers.