Weaver Austin Villeneuve & Sampson LLP
Atomic layer deposition and etch for reducing roughness
Methods and apparatuses for reducing roughness using integrated atomic layer deposition (ALD) and etch processes are described herein. In some implementations, after a mask is provided on a substrate, methods include depositing a conformal layer on the mask by ALD to reduce roughness and etching a layer underlying the mask to form patterned features having a reduced roughness. In some implementations, after a substrate is etched to a first depth to form features at the first depth in the substrate, methods include depositing a conformal layer by ALD on sidewalls of the features to protect sidewalls and reduce roughness during a subsequent etch process. The ALD and etch processes may be performed in a plasma chamber.
Lam Research Corporation
H H H H H H H H H H H H H
H01L H01L H01L H01L H01L H01L H01L H01L H01L H01L H01L H01L H01L
inventional inventional additional inventional inventional inventional inventional inventional inventional inventional inventional additional inventional
Haseeb Chen Xiang Yoshie Duming Naveed Radhika Mitchell Kazi Si-Yi Yi Ganesh
Kazi Xu Zhou Kimura Zhang Ansari Mani Brooks Sultana Li Upadhyaya