(Next Meeting: Friday, May 9, 11:30-1 in CIS 101.)

4/25 Meeting summary:

1. General announcements: Flexus stress gage due to ship next week. CMP post-clean station and spin-etch tool both due in the next few weeks. Anyone interested in these tools should contact Mary or Ed. Policy on masks for ASML will be posted soon. ASML 3-D align upgrade was installed, but another week will be required for testing. Mahnaz will coordinate with labmembers & ASML for scheduling.

2. LTO: Ed led a discussion about known and recently reported issues with LTO, summarized here:

1. Gary Yama: LTO450 has been faulting out at step 35 for leak check failure. The two minute step requires and additional 20-35 minutes to pass.
2. Gary Yama: The surface roughness observed last week is similar to the surface roughness from a deposition in Oct. 2007.
3. Duygu: Observed LTO oxide breakdown at <4 Volts for a ~30nm film deposited and tested in the Nov./Dec. 2007 time frame. Similar films deposited during the Spring 2007 were tested to 5-6V without breakdown and had low gate leakage. Duygu also tested films from devices fabricated by Abijit a few years ago with 60nm LTO oxide which also worked.
4. Recommend C-V, I-V and gate leakage testing of the current film. The recommend process includes:
   A) I-Prime Si wafers
   B) 40 nm LTO
   C) 0.2 micron Al
   D) Al wet etch
   E) FGA Anneal, time and temperature is not defined.
   G) The recommended mask is one out of Prof. Nishi's group.
   H) Qain Wang agreed to do full wafer probing, but he wants to see 1,000Ang. LTO films. He can provide the mask to match their automated prober.
5. Concerns over LTO within-wafer and wafer-to-wafer uniformity. Maurice expects ~10% uniformity across the wafer with ~0.25inch edge exclusion. I missed what the wafer-to-wafer expectation.
6. Raja (LTO300) and Maryam agreed to provide LTO uniformity data.
7. By general consinsous, the LTO particles are not a problem (at the current level) for lab members only interested in using the film as a cap.

3. Quality Circle update: Brief report from each Circle: good progress being made in each. Collectively, it is proposed that:

• Our strategy will be to build up a library of documents for each of the tools and processes in the lab. Our action item to be completed next Friday will be to agree on a template/table of contents, which the Quality Circles will work on populating. These will be posted as they are developed on the SNF server (http://www.stanford.edu/group/snf/QualityCircles)
• To facilitate scheduling of Quality Circles, there is a proposal to set aside a standard time (Tuesday mornings?) for these meetings.

4. SNF Website/wiki: To great acclaim, Nahid presented his work with J on developing a wiki-based version (Plone) of the SNF website, using the Metallization documents as a model. Plone allows a hierarchy of administrative privileges and version tracking that make it ideal for most of our website needs. John has a spare machine and will work with Nahid on setting up a working server for this.

Action items for next meeting:

1. Functional area teams: Each team (whose membership is described below) should meet and do the following:
   • Choose one "model" or "test" tool. Staff will provide equipment and monitor history for the tool, as appropriate.
   • Define (if not done already) process qual expectations for this model tool.
   • Map out Coral data collection for this model tool (process qual, standard run, or custom run)
   • Define when process quals should be done (scheduled basis, during training and/or following equipment repair/maintenance)
   • Define superuser responsibilities for this tool (training, process or equipment troubleshooting, etc., as appropriate)

Functional Area Quality Circles:

• Litho Area: Aaron (organizer) J., Il Woong, Steve Z., Renata, Nahid, Maryam (Staff members: Mahnaz, Gary, Mario)
• Etch: Nahid (organizer), Tom, J., Il Woong, Renata, Maryam, Steve Z., Ray (Staff members: Nancy, Elmer, Mike)
• epi/epi2: Onur & Renata (organizers), Raja (Staff members: Maurice, Elmer)
• RTA: Raja (organizer), Tom, Serene (Staff members: Ed, Elmer)
• Furnaces: Maryam (organizer), J., Ray, Il Woong, Renata, Raja (Staff members: Nancy, Maurice, Ted, Ray)
• Metals: J. (organizer) (Staff members: Jeannie, Jim)

Status of action items from previous weeks:

- ASML/SNF:

• Stuck epi wafers -- Method for testing wafer flatness established (granite float method) and remanufactured stress gage due to arrive soon. Gary can now retrieve stuck wafers just short of the e-chuck. Have not established a method for mounting wafers on carriers.

- STSetch/2:

• STSetch users survey. Done, summary to follow.
• STSetch2 characterization: Ed to present results at a future Grand Rounds.
• gold-contaminated processing: under discussion -- should this become an Etch Quality Circle topic?
• Methods for mounting wafers: Cool grease is being evaluated. We've received info about thermally conductive tape used at UCSB.