Chapter IBM

An ion beam is a type of particle beam consisting

of ions.
Ion beams have many uses in electronics
manufacturing (principally ion implantation) and
other industries.
Ion bombardment at normal incidence to surface
Three types of collision between ion and atom
Effects of low and high energies on atom removal
(a) low energy case (b) high energy case
 The Ion Source has arrays of permanent magnets to
produce a multi-cusp magnetic field in regions remote
from the plasma grid and the RF antenna.
The field confines the plasma by lengthening the path of
ionizing electrons and reducing their drift to the walls.
 Plasma sources generate plasmas.
Excitation of plasma requires partial ionization of neutral
atoms and/or molecules of a medium.
There are several ways to cause ionization: collisions of
energetic particles, strong electric fields acting on bond
electrons, or ionizing radiation.
 - The following reaction occurs:

Ar e Ar 2e
Argon ions are thereby produced.
A magnetic field, obtained from an electromagnetic coil or a
permanent magnet, is often applied between the anode and
cathode to make the electrons spiral.
Spiraling increases the path length of the electrons and hence
increases ionization.
 The ions are removed from the plasma by means of
extraction grids.
The grids are normally made of two or three arrays of
perforated sheets of carbon or molybdenum; these
materials can withstand erosion by ion bombardment.
The perforations in each of the sheets are aligned
above one another.
 - The outer grid
The outer grid is usually kept at ground potential, which
is a more negative level than that of the anode.
This grid therefore provides the negative field that is
needed to remove the ions from the plasma.

- The second grid

The second grid is held at a negative potential below
the ground value.
The escape of electrons from the plasma is thereby
prevented, as is their diffusion back from the work
chamber.
 - A third grid
A third grid, which is maintained at the anode potential, is
sometimes added placed between the plasma and the
electron suppressor grid to improve the performance of the
source.
- Ground Electrodes
Ground Electrodes are used for extracting positively
charged ions from the source that combine downstream
to form a broad beam.
Individual electrodes in close proximity to the extraction
electrode can be biased to inhibit back streaming of
neutralizing electrons close to the source or back
to the extraction electrode.
 Output voltages and currents are precisely controlled from
the front panel or by remote programming.
Digital displays on the front panel directly monitor the
voltage and current outputs.
Remote analog signals proportional to each output are
provided at the rear panel I/O connector.
 Focusing of the Ion Beam is also provided by the construction
and shape of the electrodes.
The suppression electrode produces an inner zero electrostatic
field, and an outer electrostatic on a field such that ions
entering this outer field are deflected by an amount that is a
function of their distance from the edge of the inner field.
The result is a focused beam having a uniform intensity over a
given target area and at a given distance from the lens.
 Ion beams can be used for sputtering or ion beam etching
and for ion beam analysis.
Ion beam etching, or sputtering, is a technique conceptually
similar to sandblasting, but using individual atoms in an ion
beam to ablate a target.
Reactive ion etching is an important extension that uses
chemical reactivity to enhance the physical sputtering effect.
 In a typical use in semiconductor manufacturing, a mask
is used to selectively expose a layer of photoresist on a
substrate such as a silicon dioxide or gallium arsenide
wafer.
The wafer is developed, and for a positive photoresist, the
exposed portions are removed in a chemical process.
The result is a pattern left on the surface areas of the
wafer that had been masked from exposure.
 The wafer is then placed in a vacuum chamber, and
exposed to the ion beam.
The impact of the ions erodes the target, abrading away
the areas not covered by the photoresist.
This method is frequently enhanced by bleeding a reactive
gas into the vacuum system, which is known as reactive
ion etching.
 Focused Ion Beam (FIB) instruments are also used
in the design verification and/or failure analysis of
semiconductor devices.
Engineering prototype devices may be modified
using the ion beam in order to rewire the
electrical circuit.
The technique may be effectively used to avoid
performing a new mask run for the purpose of
testing design changes.
A device edit (FIB milling operation) is accomplished
by focusing the ion beam on selected regions of the
device in order to mill through metal or polysilicon
structures.
Sputtering is also used in materials science to thin
samples or specific regions of samples for transmission
electron microscope analysis, or for extending surface
analytical techniques such as secondary ion mass
spectrometry or electron spectroscopy (XPS, AES) so
that they can depth profile them.
 Applications

- Ion-beam Etching
- Smoothing
- Ion-beam sputtering
- Texturing
- Ion-beam sculpting
- Cleaning
- Basis
- Shaping,Polishing,
- Broad area ion
Thinning
exposure - Milling
- TEM exposure
 Removing atoms by sputtering with an inert gas is called
ion milling or ion etching.
Sputtering can also play a role in reactive ion etching
(RIE), a plasma process carried out with chemically active
ions and radicals, for which the sputtering yield may be
enhanced significantly compared to pure physical
sputtering.
 Ion-beam sputtering (IBS) is a method in which
the target is external to the ion source.
A source can work without any magnetic field
like in a Hot filament ionization gauge . In a
Kaufman source ions are generated by
collisions with electrons that are confined by a
magnetic field as in a magnetron.
They are then accelerated by the electric field
emanating from a grid toward a target.
 Ion-Beam sculpting is a term used to describe a two-step
process to make solid-state nanopores.
The term itself was coined by Golovchenko and co-workers at
Harvard in the paper "Ion-beam sculpting at nanometer length
scales".
The term refers to the fact that solid-state nanopores are
formed by lateral mass transport about the surface of the
substrate, not simply by sputtering which refers to the removal
of material from the surface.
 The first step in ion sculpting is to make either a through
hole or a blind hole, most commonly using an focused
ion beam (FIB).
The holes are commonly ~100nm, but can be made
much smaller.
This step may or may not be done at room temperature,
with a low temperature of -120.
Next, there are three common techniques to now 'sculpt'
the hole: broad area ion exposure, TEM exposure, and
FIB exposure. Holes can be closed completely, but also
they can be left open at a lower limit of 1-10nm.
 This technique uses a broad area argon ion source beam.
If the hole is blind the wafer (often SiN or silicon oxide) is
then turned upside down, and exposed with the argon beam.
A detector counts the amount of ions passing through the
membrane (which should be zero).
The process stops when ions begin to be detected.
 A through hole in a wafer can be closed down by a
transmission electron microscope.
Due to hydrocarbon buildup, the electrons stimulate hole
closure.
This method is very slow (taking over an hour to close a 100
nm hole).
The slow method allows for great control of the hole size
(since you can watch the hole decrease), but its drawback is
that it takes a long time.
 The use of IBM for smoothing of laser mirrors and for
modifying the thickness of thin films and membranes
without affecting surface finish is reported by Jolly, and
Reader.
 Hudson has demonstrated that an ion-beam source is a
controlled method for texturing surfaces.
A typical result is presented which a structure resembling
closely packed cones was produced.
As well as the nickel and copper, Hudson went on to
investigate 26 materials, including stainless steel, silver
and gold.
 Atomically clean surfaces can be produced by IBM.
This technique can be preferable to electron beam and
electrical discharge methods which can damage the
surface.
Harper, Cuomo and Kaufman discuss in detail this well-
established application of ion beam technology.
 Thinning by use of oblique incidence argon ions has
been used to enhance polishing.
Macroscopic thinning and shaping of materials can be
applied to the fabrication of magnetic heads and surface
acoustic wave devices.
IBM of aspheric lens Shapening of diamong
indenter by IBM
 Sharpening of Manufacture of holographic mask
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 Production of Ion milling of
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bubble
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 Ion milling is especially useful for the accurate production of
shallow grooves.
Milling through masks to produce regular arrays of pits with
widths of 5 to 200m and depths of up to 1mm for enhanced
bonding.
Pillar-like configurations useful in the manufacture of precision
electrical resistive and fiber optic arrays can be produced by
ion beam methods.
Showing the ability of ion milling to etch near-vertical walls
A Ni-Fe bar bubble memory pattern
Narrow line widths produced
in carbon membrane by IBM
 Ion implantation is a material engineering process by
which ions of a material can be implanted into another
solid, thereby changing the physical properties of the
solid.
Ion implantation is used in semiconductor device
fabrication and in metal finishing, as well as various
applications in materials science research.
 Ion implantation equipment typically consists of an ion source,
where ions of the desired element are produced, an
accelerator, where the ions are electrostatically accelerated to
a high energy, and a target chamber, where the ions impinge
on a target, which is the material to be implanted.
 Typical ion energies are in the range of 10 to 500keV.
Energies in the range 1 to 10keV can be used, but result
in a penetration of only a few nanometers or less.
Energies lower than this result in very little damage to the
target, and fall under the designation ion beam deposition.
Higher energies can also be used: accelerators capable of
5MeV are common.
 The energy of the ions, as well as the ion species and the
composition of the target determine the depth of penetration
of the ions in the solid:
a) A mono-energetic ion beam will generally have a broad
depth distribution.
b) The average penetration depth is called the range of the
ions.
c) Under typical circumstances ion ranges will be between 10
nanometers and 1 micrometer.
 Applications

- Doping - Amprphization
- Silicon on Insulator - Damage recovery
- Mesotaxy - Sputtering
- Tool steel toughening - Ion channeling
- Surface finishing - Hazardous Materials
- Crystallographic Note
- High Voltage Safety
 IBM

The introduction of dopants in a semiconductor is the most

common application of ion implantation.
Dopant ions such as boron, phosphorus or arsenic are
generally created from a gas source, so that the purity of the
source can be very high.
These gases tend to be very hazardous.
 One prominent method for preparing silicon on insulator
(SOI) substrates from conventional silicon substrates is
the SIMOX process, wherein a buried high dose oxygen
implant is converted to silicon oxide by a high
temperature annealing process.
 Mesotaxy is the term for the growth of a crystallographically
matching phase underneath the surface of the host crystal
(compare to epitaxy, which is the growth of the matching
phase on the surface of a substrate).
In this process, ions are implanted at a high enough energy
and dose into a material to create a layer of a second phase,
and the temperature is controlled so that the crystal structure
of the target is not destroyed.
 Nitrogen or other ions can be implanted into a tool steel
target.
The structural change caused by the implantation produces a
surface compression in the steel, which prevent crack
propagation and thus makes the material more resistant to
fracture.
The chemical change can also make the tool more resistant to
corrosion.
 Ion implantation is used in such cases to engineer the
surfaces of such devices for more reliable performance.
As in the case of tool steels, the surface modification caused
by ion implantation includes both a surface compression
which prevents crack propagation and an alloying of the
surface to make it more chemically resistant to corrosion.
Vacancies and Interstitials.
Vacancies are crystal lattice points unoccupied by an atom: in
this case the ion collides with a target atom, resulting in
transfer of a significant amount of energy to the target atom
such that it leaves its crystal site.
Interstitials result when such atoms (or the original ion itself)
come to rest in the solid, but find no vacant space in the
lattice to reside.
 Because ion implantation causes damage to the crystal
structure of the target which is often unwanted, ion
implantation processing is often followed by a thermal
annealing.
This can be referred to as damage recovery.
 In some cases, complete amorphization of a target is
preferable to a highly defective crystal.
An amorphized film can be regrown at a lower temperature
than required to anneal a highly damaged crystal.
 Some of the collision events result in atoms being ejected
(sputtered) from the surface, and thus ion implantation will
slowly etch away a surface.
The effect is only appreciable for very large doses.
 If there is a crystallographic structure to the target and
especially in semiconductor substrates where the crystal
structure is more open, particular crystallographic directions
offer much lower stopping than other directions.
The result is that the range of an ion can be much longer if the
ion travels exactly along a particular direction, for example the
<110> direction in silicon and other diamond cubic materials.
This effect is called ion channeling.
 The toxic materials used in the ion implanter process.
Such hazardous elements, solid source and gasses are used,
such as Arsine and Phosphine .
Other elements may include Antimony, Arsenic, Phosphorus,
and Boron.
It is important not to expose yourself to these carcinogenic,
corrosive, flammable, and toxic elements.
 High voltage power supplies in ion implantation equipment can
pose a risk of electrocution.
In addition, high-energy atomic collisions can generate
radionuclides.
Prior to entry to high voltage area, terminal components must
be grounded using a grounding stick.
 Low temperature processing reduces handling an
stress problems.
No dimensional changes
Good adhesion of treated surface
New alloys possible
Can improve corrosion, oxidation, wear, hardness,
friction, fatigue
 Very shallow treatment (< 1 m)
High cost
The surface can be weakened by radiation effects
 Nitrogen implantation has been used to increase wear
resistance and give longer life,
injection molding screws
high speed steel tools
a clutch housing tool
hip prosthesis
Yttrium gives oxidation and wear resistance
Titanium and carbon on iron gives lower friction and better
wear.
Chromium is used to maintain strength of holes.