Proposal for non-standard process in stsetch

[Jim McVittie]

Mary,

I do not remember Au ever being allowed in the STS. As I said the
experiment never proved one could really bury it. The proposed solution
was to dedicate the old STS to Au wafers after the new STS was up. I agree
that Au is pretty inert but it is a lifetime killed in Si. It is also a
fast diffuser. Since we never test lifetime in the lab and it is an issue
for only a few users, maybe we should stop worrying about Au and other
metals.

	Jim 

On Thu, 16 Aug 2007, Mary Tang wrote:

> Hi Jim, et al --
> 
> Yes, I remember you mentioning these experiments...  (By the way, would 
> you still happen to have this data and be willing to share it?  It seems 
> to me that there was an awful lot of really useful information in it 
> about etching, furnaces, and cleans.)
> 
> Regarding Nahid's request....  as I vaguely recall from the last time 
> this came up (pre-Beth Pruitt) the policy was to allow gold in the 
> stsetch provided:
> 
> 1.  If the gold was patterned that it had been done by lift-off rather 
> than etching
> 2.  No gold exposed to plasma -- that it was completely covered with resist.
> 
> The rationale was that gold is pretty inert in its noble metal state, 
> but that contamination becomes an issue once wet etching is done and 
> gold appears in various oxidation states which are soluble (and appear 
> all over the wafer).  It was agreed not to support Beth's request for Au 
> in stsetch when she was a grad student because the above two conditions 
> were not met, so she went to UCSB.  I seem to recall (perhaps 
> incorrectly) that the TXRF experiments were done on wafers in which the 
> gold had been patterned using KI etchant, which would leave soluble gold 
> atoms on the wafer surfaces to examine the worst case scenario of gold 
> in stsetch....  Nahid is proposing to cover unpatterned gold present on 
> the backside of the wafers with resist -- and to use the holder.  It 
> would seem that the cross-contamination risk should be low....
> 
> My two cents'
> 
> Mary
> 
> Jim McVittie wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > A few years back, a number of experiments were done to see if we could 
> > bury Au so that a Au contaminated wafer could be etched in the STS without 
> > exposing the plasma or the chuck to Au. At that time, all the attempts 
> > failed. We always detected Au on the surface.  Part of the problem is that 
> > resist always picks up Au from the etch solution and then deposits it back 
> > on the wafer when the resist is stripped.
> >
> > 	Jim     
> >
> > On Wed, 15 Aug 2007, Nahid Harjee wrote:
> >
> >   
> >> SpecMat Committee,
> >>
> >> I am working with SOI wafers to build piezoresistive cantilevers. The
> >> interconnect on the cantilevers is a Cr/Au stack. To release the
> >> cantilevers, I am seeking permission to use stsetch to etch through the
> >> handle layer to the buried oxide, provided that the Cr/Au is fully
> >> encapsulated and is never exposed to the plasma. Below is the material stack
> >> I propose:
> >>
> >> Plasma (SF6/C4F8)
> >>
> >> Resist (7 um, patterned)
> >> Si (530 um handle layer)
> >> SiO2 (1 um buried oxide)
> >> Si (6 um device layer, patterned into cantilevers)
> >> SiO2 (100 nm)
> >> Cr (10 nm)
> >> Au (100 nm)
> >> Resist (15 um, unpatterned)
> >> Aluminum holder
> >>
> >> He cooling
> >>
> >> I believe that this process has been approved by SpecMat in the past. Please
> >> let me know if you have any questions/comments or would like more details
> >> about my process. I look forward to your response.
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >>
> >> nh
> >>
> >>
> >>     
> >
> >   
> 
> 
> 

-- 
--------------------------------------------------------------
Jim McVittie, Ph.D.    			Senior Research Scientist 
Allen Center for Integrated Systems     Electrical Engineering
Stanford University             	jmcvittie at stanford.edu
Rm. 336, 330 Serra Mall			Fax: (650) 723-4659
Stanford, CA 94305-4075			Tel: (650) 725-3640