Novel process window and product yield improvement by eliminating contact shorts

Author

Yuan-Chieh Chiu ; Shih-Ping Hong ; Fang-Hao Hsu ; Hong-Ji Lee ; Nan-Tzu Lian ; Tahone Yang ; Kuang-Chao Chen ; Chih-Yuan Lu

Author_Institution

Technol. Dev. Center, Macronix Int. Co., Ltd., Hsinchu, Taiwan

fYear

2014

fDate

19-21 May 2014

Firstpage

11

Lastpage

14

Abstract

Severe and unexpected yield loss (~26% in avg.) is found in the early development stage of the advanced flash memory. The major failure mode, array bridging contact, is revealed as the root cause and mainly induced by undercutting photo-resist (PR) profile. In this work, a novel scheme, anti-etch bottom anti-reflective coating (anti-etch BARC), is used instead of the conventional dual ARC (BARC/dielectric ARC, DARC) stacks on amorphous carbon layer (ACL) for contact hole patterning. Herein, we successfully demonstrate to eliminate the failure issue, greatly improve the yield and provide a promising solution with manufacturing feasibility.

Keywords

carbon; flash memories; integrated circuit yield; nanopatterning; photoresists; C; advanced flash memory; amorphous carbon layer; anti-etch BARC; anti-etch bottom anti-reflective coating; array bridging contact; contact hole patterning; contact short elimination; failure mode; process window; product yield improvement; undercutting photo-resist profile; unexpected yield loss; Contacts; Dielectrics; Etching; Flash memories; Manufacturing; Scanning electron microscopy; Sorting; PR profile; contact bridging; dual ARC; flash memory; plasma etching;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Advanced Semiconductor Manufacturing Conference (ASMC), 2014 25th Annual SEMI

Conference_Location

Saratoga Springs, NY

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ASMC.2014.6846947

Filename

6846947