Date:
8:30am-4:30pm, Wednesday and Thursday, May 7-8, 2025, Sheraton Albuquerque Airport Hotel, Albuquerque, NM
Course Objectives
- Provide a basic knowledge of surface conditioning and cleaning processes and technologies used in the manufacture of ICs.
- Learn about the processes and equipment used for wet, plasma, and dry cleaning.
- Share an overview and comparison of established and new surface conditioning and cleaning techniques.
- Describe specific surface conditioning techniques including critical cleaning, photoresist stripping, post-CMP cleaning, megasonics, dilute chemistries, and the use of ozone.
- Understand of how cleans affect low-k dielectrics and copper and possible cleaning challenges for new BEOL materials.
Course Description
This two-day course will provide a working knowledge of surface conditioning and cleaning techniques used in the manufacture of integrated circuits (IC). Fundamental processes and practical methods in cleaning the wafer surfaces will be described.
Upon completing this course participants will have an understanding of all types of cleaning processes used in IC manufacturing: surface conditioning for pre-diffusion clean; in particular pre-gate oxide clean; post-etch and post-implant photoresist removal; particle removal; and post-CMP cleans. Participants will understand cleaning roadmaps and limitations of clean technologies as feature sizes decrease and can make informed decisions on the surface conditioning and cleaning processes and techniques utilized in IC manufacturing.
Who Should Attend?
The intended participants are engineers, technologists, or managers who provide clean and contamination free technologies for IC manufacturing including semiconductor manufacturing process engineers, process development engineers, and integration engineers, IC equipment application and process engineers, and IC clean chemical process engineers.
Instructor: Karen Reinhart, Cameo Consulting
Karen A. Reinhardt is Principle Consultant at Cameo Consulting in San Jose, California. Prior to forming a consulting company, Karen was employed at Novellus Systems in San Jose, California. In this role she was responsible for investigating and assessing new and unique cleaning technologies that will allow realization of the ITRS roadmap with respect to smaller geometries, new materials, and the environmental issues associated with current cleaning processes. She has published more than 30 technical papers ranging from plasma processing to damage characterization and cleaning technology assessment. She has been awarded six patents. She is currently leading the ITRS surface preparation technical working group.
Course Materials
Course Notes will be provided.