Pre-heat processes for millisecond anneal system

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-11101142-B2
Application number	US-202016893515-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 5, 2020
Priority date	Feb 1, 2016
Publication date	Aug 24, 2021
Grant date	Aug 24, 2021

Abstract

Preheat processes for a millisecond anneal system are provided. In one example implementation, a heat treatment process can include receiving a substrate on a wafer support in a processing chamber of a millisecond anneal system; heating the substrate to an intermediate temperature; and heating the substrate using a millisecond heating flash. Prior to heating the substrate to the intermediate temperature, the process can include heating the substrate to a pre-bake temperature for a soak period.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A heat treatment process for a thermal processing system, the heat treatment process comprising:
receiving a substrate on a wafer support in a processing chamber of a thermal processing system;
maintaining a temperature of the substrate at a pre-bake temperature, the pre-bake temperature being in a range of about 200° C. to about 500° C. for a soak period, the soak period having a duration in a range of about 0.5 seconds to about 600 seconds;
wherein one or more oxidizing species are outgassed during the soak period, the soak period beginning after the temperature of the substrate is increased to the pre-bake temperature;
heating the substrate to an intermediate temperature by increasing the temperature from the pre-bake temperature to the intermediate temperature at a first temperature increase rate, the intermediate temperature being greater than the pre-bake temperature and less than about 900° C.; and
subsequent to heating the substrate to the intermediate temperature, heating the substrate using a heating flash, the heating flash operable to heat a top surface of the substrate at a second temperature increase rate, the second temperature increase rate greater than the first temperature increase rate.

2. The heat treatment process of claim 1 , wherein maintaining the temperature of the substrate at the pre-bake temperature is implemented with a first heat source and heating the substrate using a heating flash is implemented with a second heat source that is different than the first heat source.

3. The heat treatment process of claim 2 , wherein the second heat source comprises an arc lamp.

4. The heat treatment process of claim 1 , wherein the process comprises admitting an ambient gas into the processing chamber during the soak period.

5. The heat treatment process of claim 4 , wherein the ambient gas comprises nitrogen, argon, or helium.

6. The heat treatment process of claim 4 , wherein the ambient gas is at atmospheric pressure.

7. The heat treatment process of claim 4 , wherein the ambient gas is at a pressure below about 1 Torr.

8. The heat treatment process of claim 4 , wherein the ambient gas comprises one or more of hydrogen, deuterium, ammonia, or hydrazine species.

9. The heat treatment process of claim 1 , wherein the process comprises inducing a plasma to create chemically reducing species during the soak period.

10. The heat treatment process of claim 1 , wherein the process comprises creating species using UV light during the soak period.

11. The heat treatment process of claim 1 , wherein the second temperature increase rate is greater than about 10 4 ° C. per second.

Assignees

• Beijing E Town Semiconductor Tech Co Ltd
• Mattson Tech Inc

Inventors

• Timans Paul

Classifications

• H10P72/0602

  Temperature monitoring · CPC title

• H10P72/0462

  characterised by the construction of the processing chambers, e.g. modular processing chambers · CPC title

• H10P72/0436

  mainly by radiation · CPC title

• H10P95/90 Primary

  Thermal treatments, e.g. annealing or sintering · CPC title

• H01L21/67248

  Electricity · mapped topic