저널

At Present, 200mm wafer technology is being applied for commercial fabrications of 64, 128, and 256 M DRAM devices, and 300mm technology will be evolved for 1G DRAM devices in the early 21th century, recognizing limitations of several process technologies. In particular recognition has been realized in harmful effects of surface contamination of trace metals introduced during devicing processes. Such a guide line for surface metal contamination has been proposed as 1E9 and 1E10 atoms/$ extrm{cm}^2$ of individual metal contamination for wafering and devicing of 1G DRAM, respectively, and so its measurement limit should be at least 1E8 atoms/$ extrm{cm}^2$. The detection limit of present measurement systems is 2E9 atoms/$ extrm{cm}^2$ obtainable with TRXFA(Total Reflection X-Ray Fluorescence Analysis). TRXFA is nondestructive and the simplest in terms of operation, and it maps the whole wafer surfaces but needs detection improvement. X-Ray intensity produced with synchrotron accelerator is much higher than that of conventional X-ray sources by order of 4-5 magnitudes. Hence theoretically its reactivity with silicon surfaces is expected to be much higher than the conventional one, realizing improvement of detection limit. X-ray produced with synchrotron accelerator is illuminated at a very low angle with silicon wafer surfaces such as 0.1 degree and reflects totally. Hence informations only from surface can be collected and utilized without overlapping with bulk informations. This study shows the total reflection phenomenon and quantitative improvement of detection limit for metallic contamination. It is confirmed that synchrotron X-ray can be a very promising alternative for realizing improvement of detection limit for the next generation devices.

Synchrotron;Total reflection;X-ray;Semiconductor;Cleaning;