The Art of Spin

Coating

Dr. Occhiogrosso,
Apra Mattoo, Arielle Galambos,
Mitchell Fourman
July 1, 2003
Say Hi to Si
• A diamond cutter is used to cut
Si wafers. DO NOT touch the Si
wafer with your hands. Use
tweezers to handle wafer.
• Place diamond cutter on the
very edge of the Si wafer and
press down firmly. The Si wafer
should cleave easily.
• Si wafer can cleave either as
triangles or squares depending
on the arrangement of atoms in
the Si crystal lattice structure.
Try and use (1 0 0) wafers
because they cleave as squares
and are very easy to cut…you
will most likely not find them. . .
 The Need to Clean
 Cleaning Si wafers is a multi-step process
determined by the type of Si surface needed
 New packages of Si wafers are pre-treated
to be slightly hydrophobic. What does this
mean?
 However, for the purposes of spin-coating
you either want a very hydrophilic surface or
a very hydrophobic surface. You have to
create such a surface through your cleaning
technique.
 HYDROPHILIC Si
 Fill a beaker with 5:1:1 H2O:
H202:NH4OH and place on hot plate
for 15mins at 80oC to remove any
organic contamination.
 Rinse wafers in deionized water
 10:1 H20:HF for 30 seconds to
remove metallic contaminants as a
result of step 1 by etching silicon
dioxide
 Mix H2SO4:H20:H202 (piranha) in a
1:1:3 ratio in a glass beaker.Place
beaker onto hot plate for 2 hours
slightly below boiling. You must be
present while your Si wafers are
boiling. You cannot go out to lunch
while your Si wafers on boiling. You
can read Harry Potter as you wait.
This step removes any alkali ions,
metal hydroxides and trace heavy
metals to create new clean oxide
layer.
 Remove Si wafers and rinse thoroughly with
de-ionized water for 5 min.
 HYDROPHOBIC Si
 Mix Ammonium Flouride Solution
 Mix 100g of NH4F with 125mL of
H20. Its most likely already made.
Ask for assistance if you have to
make it.
 Mix NH4F:HF in a 6:1 ratio and
immerse wafer for 3-4 min. .
 Rinse wafer with de-ionized water.
 Dry wafer with N2 gas.
 NOTE: HF will burn your bones.
More precisely it ‘melts’ your bones
and gives you cancer. Actually you
will die before you get cancer from
the severity of the burns…so its not
a “known” carcinogen, but it’s still
pretty darn toxic. REU/GRAD
STUDENTS must assist you w/ HF
 Spin Coating Polymer Solutions
onto Si Wafers
 Make your polymer solution.
Follow handout protocol for
polybutadiene.
 Using tweezers, place your
cleaned, cut Si wafer onto the
center of the bench-top spinner
that is under the hood.
 Pipette your polymer solution &
apply drop-wise to Si wafer.
 Spin your sample immediately
for about 30 seconds at
2500rpms.
 Our spinner is not this nice and
is often broken. Ask a grad
student to show you how to
clean the spinner.
 OOOO Pretty Colors!
 As you spin you will quickly notice a color change
occurring on you Si wafer. The variety in color is
dependant on your polymer and the density of your
solution and unique to each polymer.
 The colors are due to the fact that different thickness
of polymer film diffract different wavelengths of light.
In spinning, the polymer’s thickness changes as it
disperses evenly across the Si wafer. The general
rule is the darker your color, the thicker your film.
 A dark blue film will have a thickness of about 1000A.
A colorless film will be less than 500A.
Any Questions?
 No questions? Fine,
then finish
answering the
questions on the 3-
page worksheet you
received. REU’s
are to please assist.