Centura 300 plasma etching cluster
The Centura 300 etch platform from Applied Materials is equipped with two Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) reactors (DPSII), designed for plasma etching processes of 300 mm wafers. The inductively coupled plasma is sustained by two RF generators operating at 13.56 MHz, one to generate the plasma and the other mainly to polarize the wafer. These generators have been modified using pulsyncTM to allow pulsing at frequencies between 10 Hz and 20 kHz and duty cycles between 10 and 90 %. The system is capable of pulsing both source and/or bias independently or in a fully synchronized manner.
The platform is connected to a customized XPS analysis chamber equipped with Thermo Electron Theta 300 spectrometer having angle Resolved capability. The processed can then be transferred under vacuum for further surface analysis. Each chamber was modified to implement diagnostics such as mass spectrometry, Laser or broad-band UV absorption, spectroscopic ellipsometry, ion flux probe, in order to probe the plasma gas phase and/or the surface being etched.
