Laser Processing of Silicon for Advanced Microelectronic Devices and Circuits
- PDF / 3,019,291 Bytes
- 13 Pages / 415.8 x 637.2 pts Page_size
- 88 Downloads / 257 Views
Inc.
Laser ani Electron-Beam Solid interactions and ::aterials
307
Processing
LASER PROCESSING OF SILICON FOR ADVAN4CED MICROELECTRONIC DEVICES AND CIRCUITS*
L.D. HESS, S.A. KOKOROWSKI, G.L. OLSON AND G. YARON' Hughes Research Laboratories, Malibu, California, USA
ABSTRACT Some of the basic requirements currently envisioned for advanced microelectronic devices and circuits are outlined and discussed in terms of fabrication techniques. Phenomenological aspects of laser processing of semiconductor materials are presented and related to the potential application of this technology for overcoming some of the fundamental limitations of conventional fabrication methods. Laser processing results obtained from a variety of siliconbased materials and test structures are presented and used to illustrate the unique features of the laser technique and the novel approach it brings to semiconductor device and circuit fabrication.
INTRODUCTION There are many challenges to device physicists, circuit designers and materials scientists in the microelectronics field where major efforts are currently being made to develop increasingly smaller devices, and to integrate them into circuits with greater functional packing density and performance. At a miniaturization stage which precedes the ultimate limits imposed by basic physical interactions, there are a number of restrictions to the minimum achievable feature size of solid state devices such as capacitors and transistors which are related primarily to device configurations, fabrication procedures, and available fabrication technologies. Laser and other directed energy beams provide unique characteristics which can be used to overcome conventional semiconductor processing limitations and, additionally, to make possible the fabrication of new device and circuit configurations. In this article we review results obtained recently in our investigation of laser processing techniques for use in the fabrication of advanced microelectronic devices and circuits. A variety of materials and configurations which will be useful for achieving the overall VLSI and VHSIC goals have been studied with the use of both pulsed and cw laser techniques. Much of this activity is necessarily still in the research stages; however, there have been many new and encouraging findings which indicate that laser processing technology may become a very important factor in the realization of advanced solid state devices and circuits. The laser technique offers inherently unique advantages for fabricating stacked structure device configurations and for circuits having submicron feature sizes. In the first two sections, some general considerations regarding advanced microelectronic devices and circuits are outlined, and the physics of laser
Supported in part by U.S.
Army ERADCOM,
Currently with National Semiconductor,
Contract No. Santa Clara,
DAAK 20-80-C-0269. California.
308 Basic device and circuit fabrication processes processing is discussed briefly. Important observations regarding the are described
Data Loading...
