Technical Glossary of Terms

Barrier is a thin layer of conducting film which prevents the primary conductor, either aluminum or copper, from migrating into the oxide or silicon. A secondary purpose of the barrier is to promote adhesion of the primary conductor.

Chemical Mechanical Polishing or Planarization (CMP) is a process that uses a slurry and circular pad to make the surface of the wafer flat. In a very gross sense, to CMP a wafer is like sanding a dining room table to a fine finish with an orbital sander.

Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) processes are used to deposit dielectric films in an integrated circuit, as well as for depositing conductive metal layers, particularly those with line widths too small for effective deposition with PVD or other deposition technologies. CVD may be thought of as a high-tech spray painting process where paint vapor coats all the surfaces uniformly.

Clean is the removal of all undesirable materials from the surface of the wafer without causing damage to the exposed layers. This includes the removal of photoresist and post-etch polymers. Cleans are performed with both wet and dry cleaning technologies.

Copper Damascene/Dual Damascene is a process where vias and trenches are etched into insulating material. Copper is then filled into all the vias and trenches and sanded back so the conducting materials are only left in the vias and trenches.

Deposition is the process in which a film of either electrically insulating or electrically conductive material is deposited on the surface of a wafer.

Dielectrics are materials that are non-conductive and used as insulators in integrated circuits. Commonly used materials include silicon oxide and silicon nitride.

Dry clean is usually a plasma process used to remove photoresist and residues from the wafer surface.

Electrofill,  Novellus' high technology electrochemical deposition process, deposits high quality copper films into the deep, narrow trenches in advanced ICs.

Etch is a chemical reactive process for selectively removing material on a silicon wafer during semiconductor manufacturing.

Front Opening Unified Pod (FOUP) is a plastic box used in the semiconductor factory to transport wafers from processing machine to processing machine. It has standard dimensions and openings that have been agreed upon by all semiconductor manufacturers.

Hollow Cathode Magnetron (HCM) is a patented source technology for sputtering material onto the surface of the wafer. The HCM develops a plasma, like you see in a fluorescent light. The excited plasma vaporizes material of a target held in the HCM which is then directed at the wafer, where it condenses and sticks.

High Density Plasma (HDP) is a gas that has been excited to a level that electrons are leaving the outer orbits of each atom of the gas. When the electron leaves the orbit, it emits light. This is the process that illuminates fluorescent light bulbs. Novellus HDP (deposited on the SPEED platform) however, is much denser—there are more ions and electrons in a smaller volume excited with much higher voltages.

Interconnects are metal film layers that "wire" together the millions of transistors included in an integrated circuit.

low-k   k is the dielectric constant of the insulating film being deposited on a substrate. The film is "low-k" if its dielectric constant is less than that of silicon dioxide (SiO2), which has a k-value of about 4.0. An "ultra low-k" film has a significantly lower dielectric constant, typically below 2.0.  By comparison, air, as an insulator, has a k-value of 1.0.

Micron is a unit of length, about 40-millionths of an inch. A human hair is approximately 100 microns wide.

Organosilicate Glass (OSG) is a carbon-doped low-k material with a k-value of ~ 2.7.

Passivation is the final layer in a semiconductor device that forms a hermetic seal over the circuitry. Plasma nitride and silicon dioxide are the primary materials used in this process.

Photolithography is the process by which a circuit pattern is transferred to a wafer.

Photoresist is a light-sensitive organic polymer that is used in the photolithography process to develop a pattern which masks some areas of the film to protect them during the etch process.

Photoresist removal is the removal of all remaining photoresist left on the wafer after the implant or etch process.

Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD), also known as sputtering, is used in a subtractive aluminum manufacturing process to deposit the thin conductive films that wire the transistors together. PVD is also used in a copper damascene manufacturing process to deposit the copper barrier layer (which helps to contain the copper lines in the device) and the copper seed layer (which serves as a nucleation layer on which the copper conductive fill "grows").

Plasma-Enhanced CVD (PECVD)  A CVD process which is enhanced by the use of a plasma to excite the gases in the reaction chamber.

Plasmas are ionized gases representing the fourth state of matter. In the deposition process plasmas are often generated using a radio frequency (RF) energy field. When used for photoresist and residue removal the plasmas may be RF or microwave frequencies.
 
UVTP, or Ultra Violet Thermal Processing, is a post-deposition manufacturing step used to change the mechanical characteristics of deposited films.