Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD)

CVD and PVD

Dr. Saurabh Nagar
Assistant Professor Sr.
Department of Micro and nanoelectronics
School of Electronics Engineering
VIT

Most of the Slides in this presentation are taken from slides prepared by Prof. V.R. Rao for EE669 (VLSI Technology) at IIT Bombay and Dr. K. Sivasankaran
for ECE5024

CVD Types
Issues CVD Reactions
 CVD Process Steps

Dielectric and Polysilicon Deposition Polysilicon Deposition Example

CVD Sources Dielectric Deposition Methods

Step Coverage Step Coverage/Conformality

 Deposited Dielectrics P-Glass Flow

Doping and Autodoping of Films Reducing Autodoping

Comparison between different
Common LPCVD Applications
Methods

LPCVD Polysilicon films

 CVD Kinetics Laminar Flow

Boundary/Stagnant Layer Formation First Order Model of Deposition

Limit Regions Reduced Pressure (LPCVD)

Example CVD Polysilicon Deposition

Deposition Rate vs Temperature

CVD Kinetics CVD

LPCVD

CVD Systems

APCVD

LPCVD
LPCVD Systems Common LPCVD Films

Metal CVD Gas Safety

Plasma Enhanced CVD System

PECVD Process Parameters

• Substrate Temperature: Controlled by External Heater
― Surface Migration
• Gas Flow: higher flow rates can increase growth rate and uniformity
• Pressure
― Changes the energy of ions reaching electrodes
― Can change deposition rate
― Increased pressure may lead to chemical reactions in the gas
― Effects also depend on Gas Concentration
• Power
― Affects the number of electrons available for activation and the
energy of those electrons
― Increased power may lead to increase chemical reaction in gas
― Increased power increases deposition rate
• Frequency
― Changes Plasma Characteristics
― Changes ion bombardment characteristics
― Sometimes use dual frequency system to control these two processes
independently
Plasma Induced Damage Deposition Processes

Laser Enhanced CVD Metal-Organic CVD (MOCVD)

 PHYSICAL VAPOR DEPOSITION

• Physical methods produce the atoms that

deposit on the substrate
– Evaporation
– Sputtering
• Sometimes called vacuum deposition because
the process is usually done in an evacuated
chamber
• PVD is used for metals.
• Dielectrics can be deposited using specialized
equipment

Evaporation
 Thermal Evaporation

http://www.lesker.com/newweb/Deposition_Sources/ThermalEvaporationSource
s_Resistive.cfm

E-beam Evaporation
• At sufficiently low pressure and reasonable
distances between source and wafer,
evaporant travel in straight line to the wafer
– Step coverage is close to zero
– If the source is small, we can treat it as a point
source
– If the source emission is isotropic, it is easy to
compute the distribution of atoms at the surface
of the wafer

http://www.fen.bilkent.edu.tr/~aykutlu/msn551/evaporation.pdf
 1/ 2
−2 m
Revap = 5.83 10 AS   Pe
T 

– Pe is the equilibrium vapor pressure of the melt (torr)

– m is the gram-molecular mass
– T is the temperature (K)
– As is area of source
• The vapor pressure depends strongly on the
temperature (Claussius-Clapeyron equation)
– In order to have a reasonable evaporation rate (0.1-1
m/min), the vapor pressure must be about 1-10 mtorr

Multi-Film Deposition Step Coverage

 Step-coverage
◼ Evaporation technique is very
directional due to the large mean • Corrections can be applied if the source is a small,
free paths of gas molecules at low
pressure. finite area
◼ Shadowing of patterns and poor – If we now move the center of the wafer from the
step coverage can occur when perpendicular position, but tile it with respect to the
depositing thin films.
source, an extra term must be added
◼ Rotation of the planetary substrate
holder can minimize these effects.
◼ Heating substrate can promote atom
Revap
mobility, improve step coverage
and adhesion. v= cos k cos i
◼ Shadow masking and lift-off are Nr 2

processes where poor step coverage

is desirable.

Planetaries
• Wafer holders that rotate wafer position
during deposition to increase film thickness
uniformity across wafer and from one wafer to
another.
– Wobbling wafer holders increase step coverage
• Nonuniformity of evaporatant can occur when
angular emission of evaporant is narrower
than the ideal source
– Crucible geometry
– Melt depth to melt area ratio
– Density of gas atoms over the surface of the melt
• Evaporating alloys is difficult Because of the differing
vapor pressures.
– Composition of the deposited material may very different
from that of the target material
• The problem can be overcome by
– Using multiple e-beams on multiple sources
• This technique causes difficulties in sample uniformity because of
the spacing of the sources
– Evaporating source to completion (until no material is left)
• Dangerous to do in e-beam system
• Compounds are also hard to evaporate
because the molecular species may be
different from the compound composition
– Energy provided may be used to dissociate
compound.
– When evaporating SiO2, SiO is deposited.
Evaporation in a reactive environment (flowing O2
gas near crucible during deposition) helps
reconstitute oxide.

• Advantages
– Little damage to the
wafer
– Deposited films are
usually very pure
– Limited step coverage
Sputtering
• Disadvantages
– Materials with low vapor
pressures are very
difficult to evaporate
• Refractory metals
• High temperature
dielectrics
– No in situ precleaning
– Limited step coverage
– Film adhesion can be
problematic
◼ Wide variety of materials can be
deposited because material is put into the
vapor phase by a mechanical rather than a
chemical or thermal process (including
alloys and insulators).
◼ Excellent step coverage of the sharp
topologies because of a higher chamber
pressure, causing large number of
scattering events as target material travels
towards wafers.
◼ Film stress can be controlled to some
degree by the chamber pressure and RF http://www.knovel.com
power.

Sputter Yield
Factors affecting Sputtering

Structure of DC Plasma
◼ Sputter deposition is done in a
vacuum chamber (~10mTorr) as
RF Sputtering
follows:
– Plasma is generated by applying
an RF signal producing energetic
ions.
– Target is bombarded by these ions
(usually Ar+).
– Ions knock the atoms from the
target.
– Sputtered atoms are transported to
the substrate where deposition
occurs.
 Electron Cyclotron Resonance Plasma
Magnetron Sputtering
Deposition

Reactive Ion Sputtering

Sputtering Details
Stress in Sputtered Films

Step Coverage Evaporation vs Sputtering

Sputtering in CMOS