Real-time material quality prediction, fault detection, and contamination control in AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistor metalorganic chemical vapor deposition process using in situ chemical sensing
Gallium nitride and its alloys promise to be key materials for future heterojunction semiconductor devices aimed at high frequency, high power electronic applications. However, manufacturing for such high performance products is challenged by reproducibility and material quality constraints that are notably higher than those required for optoelectronic applications. To meet this challenge, in situ mass spectrometry was implemented in AlGaN∕GaN∕AlN metalorganic chemical vapor deposition processes as a real-time process and wafer state metrology tool. In particular, the various pregrowth gas phase impurity levels within the reactor, measured by mass spectrometry in real time, were correlated to photoluminescence band-edge and deep-level properties measured postprocess. Band-edge intensities increased and deep-level intensities decreased with lower oxygen-containing impurity levels in the pregrowth environment. These real-time indications of oxygen impurity incorporation were used for fault detection and to ...
Real‐time process and product diagnostics in rapid thermal chemical vapor deposition using in situ mass spectrometric sampling
Mass spectrometry has been exploited for rapid real‐time sensing of both reactant and product species in single‐wafer rapid thermal chemical vapor deposition (RTCVD) of polycrystalline Si from SiH4. Active mass spectrometric sampling at pressures to 5 Torr is achieved using two‐stage differential pumping of a sampling aperture in the exhaust stream, leading to response times as short as ∼3 sec to concentration and pressure changes in the reactor during a process carried out in ∼30 sec. In addition to reactant species, gaseous reaction byproducts have been identified and differentiated from cracking fragments of the reactant through relative intensities of mass fragments as a function of wafer temperature (i.e., reaction rate). For RTCVD of poly‐Si from SiH4, carried out in the range 450–800 °C at 5 Torr in 10% SiH4/Ar, mass spectra reveal not only the time dependence of reactant (monitored by SiH2+, 30 amu), but also—at higher temperatures—reactant depletion and product generation (from H2+, 2 amu). These...
SR topography of plastically deformed Fe-Si bicrystals - observation in situ and post mortem
SR reflection topography was applied to study the interaction of slip dislocations with the grain boundaries in Fe-4at%Si bicrystals deformed by compression. Three experimental settings with either a white or monochromatic beam were used and the corresponding orientation contrast analysed. Dislocation transmission through the grain boundary was observed in bicrystals with favourable geometry of the slip systems.