Control of solid state dimensional features

US6783643B2 · kind B2 · utility

Assignee

• President and Fellows of Harvard College · US

Inventors

• Jene A. Golovchenko · Lexington, US
• Daniel Branton · Lexington, US
• Michael J. Aziz · Cambridge, US
• Jiali Li · Fayetteville, US
• Derek M. Stein · Somerville, US
• Ciaran J. McMullan · Moville, IE

Key dates

• Filing date: Jun 27, 2002
• Grant date: Aug 31, 2004
• Expiry date: Jun 27, 2022

Classification

• Technology area (CPC H): Electricity
• CPC primary: H01L2924/0002
• WIPO field: Measurement
• WIPO sector: Instruments

Abstract

A solid state structure having a surface is provided and exposed to a flux, F, of incident ions under conditions that are selected based on: where C is concentration of mobile adatoms at structure surface, r is vector surface position, t is time, T1 is number of adatoms created per incident ion, D is adatom diffusivity, &tgr;trap is average lifetime of an adatom before adatom annihilation occurs at a structure surface defect characteristic of structure material, and &sgr;C is cross-section for adatom annihilation by incident ions characteristic of selected ion exposure conditions. Ion exposure condition selection controls sputtering of the structure surface by incident ions to transport, within the structure including the structure surface, structure material to a feature location, in response to the ion flux exposure, to produce a feature substantially by locally adding structure material to the feature location.