Paper TF+AS+EL+PS-ThM3
Advances in Numerical Simulation of SiN ALD

Thursday, October 25, 2018, 8:40 am, Room 102A

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) includes a fast growing area of applications and could be foreseen as becoming one of the leading semiconductor technologies. In many cases, it allows accurate atomic-scale deposition of films with almost conformal profiles. Here we present new results on the Monte Carlo feature-scale simulations of ALD conducted with a feature-profile simulator, FPS3D [1-5], as well as comparison of obtained simulation results with the corresponding experiments. The ALD processes are often complex, involving large molecules and, to our knowledge, have not been addressed by other feature-profile simulations except FPS3D. The main factor of all of ALD schemes is the cyclic change in flux parameters and in the corresponding surface chemistry, which results in a single monolayer or, most typically, in a fraction of a monolayer of a film deposited after application of a cycle. Here, we consider a case of ALD with two time-steps: (1) dichlorosilane gas and (2) ammonia plasma. The SiN deposition rate in this case is about a half of a monolayer per cycle. A set of surface reactions is considered which emphasize the steric hindrance effect that was found to be an important factor in explaining deposition rates for this ALD process.

References:

[1] P. Moroz, IEEE Trans. on Plasma Science, 39 2804 (2011).

[2] P. Moroz, D. J. Moroz, ECS Transactions, 50 61 (2013).

[3] P. Moroz, D. J. Moroz, J. Physics: CS 550 012030 (2014).

[4] P. Moroz, 15^th Int. Conf. on Atomic Layer Deposition, Portland, OR (2015).