Surface Transportation of Chemical Species in Spray-Cleaning and Gate Oxide Integrity

Centrifugal spray process technology provides a cost-effective and environment-friendly wafer-cleaning solution, and has been considered a good alternative to "wet bench" cleans according to K. K. Christenson (1997), and E. Olson and B. J. Palla (2004). Spray tools use centrifugal force to transfer fresh chemicals or rinse water onto and to eject reaction products and unused reactants from the wafer surface. Knowing the extreme difficulties in quantifying the many aspects in such a dynamic and complex system, experimental demonstrations of the mass transportation along wafer surface and its impacts on critical cleanings become more practical and important