Surface preparation prior to deposition
First Claim
1. A method of depositing a film over a surface in a partially fabricated integrated circuit, comprising exposing the surface to products of a plasma, thereby modifying termination of the surface without significantly affecting bulk properties beneath the surface, and depositing a layer thereover after modifying the surface termination.
2 Assignments
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
Methods are provided herein for treating substrate surfaces in preparation for subsequent nucleation-sensitive depositions (e.g., polysilicon or poly-SiGe) and adsorption-driven deposition (e.g. atomic layer deposition or ALD). Prior to depositing, the surface is treated with non-depositing plasma products. The treated surface more readily nucleates polysilicon and poly-SiGe (such as for a gate electrode), or more readily adsorbs ALD reactants (such as for a gate dielectric). The surface treatment provides surface moieties more readily susceptible to a subsequent deposition reaction, or more readily susceptible to further surface treatment prior to deposition. By changing the surface termination of the substrate with a low temperature radical treatment, subsequent deposition is advantageously facilitated without depositing a layer of any appreciable thickness and without significantly affecting the bulk properties of the underlying material. Preferably less than 10 Å of the bulk material incorporates the excited species, which can include fluorine, chlorine and particularly nitrogen excited species.
748 Citations
25 Claims
- 1. A method of depositing a film over a surface in a partially fabricated integrated circuit, comprising exposing the surface to products of a plasma, thereby modifying termination of the surface without significantly affecting bulk properties beneath the surface, and depositing a layer thereover after modifying the surface termination.
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19. A method of forming a transistor gate stack, the method comprising:
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forming a gate dielectric over a semiconductor substrate;
exposing the gate dielectric to a source of nitrogen excited species, wherein exposing incorporates less than about 10 atomic % nitrogen at a depth of greater than about 10 Å
from an upper surface of the gate dielectric; and
depositing a silicon-containing gate electrode over the gate dielectric after exposing the gate dielectric to the source of nitrogen excited species. - View Dependent Claims (20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25)
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Specification