Detection of Metal Contamination on Silicon Wafer Backside and Edge by New TXRF Methods.

In conventional 200 mm wafer processing, backside defects are not considered to be of much concern because they are obscured by wafer backside topography. However, in current 300 mm wafer processing where both sides of a wafer are polished, backside defects require more consideration. In the beginning, backside defect inspection examined particle contamination because particle contamination adversely influences the depth of field in lithography. Recently, metal contamination is of concern because backside metal contamination causes cross-contamination in a process line, and backside metals easily transfer to the front surface. As the industry strives to yield more devices from the area around the wafer edge, edge exclusion requirements have also become more important. The current International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors [1] requires a 2 mm edge exclusion. Therefore, metal contamination must be controlled to less than 2 mm from the edge because metal contamination easily diffuses in silicon wafers. To meet these current semiconductor processing requirements, newly developed zero edge exclusion TXRF (ZEE-TXRF) and backside measurement TXRF (BAC-TXRF) are effective metrology methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]