AVS 46th International Symposium
    Applied Surface Science Division Friday Sessions
       Session AS-FrM

Paper AS-FrM5
An Evaluation of the ALS Micro-ESCA Beam Line Performance for Small Particle Analysis

Friday, October 29, 1999, 9:40 am, Room 6A

Session: New or Improved Surface Related Analytical Techniques
Presenter: C.R. Brundle, Applied Materials, Inc.
Authors: C.R. Brundle, Applied Materials, Inc.
Y. Uritsky, Applied Materials, Inc.
G. Conti, Applied Materials, Inc.
P. Kinney, MicroTherm, LLC
Y. Ynzunza, Intel Corporation
E. Principe, Charles Evans and Associates
Correspondent: Click to Email
Intel, Applied Materials, and the ALS synchrotron staff have developed a micro-ESCA beam line at the Advanced Light Source, LBL. One of the major objectives was to produce "user-friendly" analysis at a spatial resolution significantly beyond that available in commercial instrumentation. We review the status of the project using both test structures and real particle situations and conclude the following: 1) Usable signal intensities are attainable down to ~2 µm size features, the nominal X-Ray beam size. This is 5 to 10x better than the PHI Quantum 2000. 2) The sample handling and navigation system to find small features works well (considerably better than any commercially available approach on ESCA systems). 3) The availability of the NEXAFS operation mode, in addition to the ESCA mode, provides valuable additional chemical state delineation capabilities. 4) Charging issues for insulating films and particles need to be resolved. 5) Since the "turn-around" analytical time and spatial resolution will always be far worse than for commercial SAM, the practical usefulness of the beam line depends strongly on its enhanced capability, compared to SAM, for chemical state delineation using the ESCA chemical shifts and near-edge structure, and on the reduced beam effects compared to e-beam SAM.