Dutch ASM Company propose XP8 Vertos Flowable Carbon technology is billed as the first industrial system to use plasma chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) to apply flowable carbon films. The development aims to produce logic and memory chips with increasingly complex three-dimensional architectures. In this structure, the cavities in the wafer become narrower and deeper, so traditional thin-film applications are often insufficient.
Image source: ASM International NV
The key feature of this process is the carbon material’s ability to flow into narrow gaps and fill them from below during deposition, while flattening the surface on its own. As a result, just one PECVD operation performs two functions simultaneously: filling gaps and cavities without voids and transitions, and smoothing, i.e. creating an almost flat surface for the next stage of wafer processing.
Today, after the wafer surface is coated with a carbon film to fill the voids, additional surface treatment, such as chemical mechanical polishing or etching, is required to remove excess material. With new “flowing carbon” technology, these operations have the potential to be reduced or eliminated because the film self-levels its surface directly during deposition.
In addition to being able to fill structures with large aspect ratios (deep, narrow spaces), the material also improves thermal stability and allows controlled partial filling and subsequent depression formation. This is especially important for modern 3D NAND, DRAM and advanced logic circuits, where small changes in topography can impact process tolerances and wafer yields.
Importantly, XP8 Vertos technology has made it out of the lab. ASM reports on its application in mass production. The system combines filling and alignment operations on a single PECVD platform, simplifying the wafer manufacturing process chain and reducing the number of interoperable changeovers. In essence, ASM solves one of the problems of further scaling of semiconductors, not by reducing component size again, but by using a new material that can simultaneously adapt to complex 3D geometries and form a flat surface for the next step in the semiconductor lithography process.
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