FSI enter the single wafer cleaning market
FSI International, announced the release of its new ORION Single Wafer Cleaning System. The system’s closed chamber design permits complete control and containment of the wafer environment, addressing several cleaning-related issues on the critical path for 32nm and 22nm technologies. These include the reduction of material loss during photoresist stripping after ultra shallow implants and the elimination of material loss and galvanic corrosion in high-k metal gates and copper interconnects with metal containing capping layers.
“Our customers have asked us to provide single wafer cleaning technologies currently not available for advanced nodes,” said Don Mitchell, FSI’s president and CEO. “The FSI ORION system is our response. The ORION platform is differentiated by its ability to solve the critical path cleaning challenges for next-generation ICs, and it contains cleaning technology built on over 30-years of FSI know-how. Over the last two years, performance has been validated on development systems in the field and production systems are now available.”
“The ORION system’s unique closed chamber design permits the use of volatile, highly-reactive chemistries like our ViPR technology for single-step, all-wet stripping of the highly implanted photoresist created during the fabrication of 32nm devices,” added Dr. Scott Becker, FSI’s vice president of marketing and product management. “By eliminating ashing, we not only reduce material loss by a factor of ten, but also reduce the cycle time, process complexity and the number of tools and process steps. The closed chamber also allows us to effectively eliminate the oxygen in the wafer environment that is responsible for material loss and corrosion in high-k metal gates and new copper interconnects with cobalt and other metals in the capping layers.”
The ORION system’s three-dimensional cluster configuration delivers high throughput, great flexibility and the most efficient use of space. The system incorporates many of FSI’s proven core technologies: in-line chemical blending and control; energetic aerosol chemical and water delivery; and flexible, recipe-driven procedures to deliver uncompromised process performance. Its modular design accommodates multiple chamber types and permits the addition of modules to increase maximum throughput.
