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Surface cleaning process for plasma-etched SiC wafer

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Abstract

In this paper, we explored a method to remove the contamination and impurities left on SiC surface after plasma-etched process. The stubborn contamination is resulting from fluorochemical caused by plasma-etched process, residue left after stripping Ni metal mask, Ni–O compounds formed by the metal mask with SiC Si surface oxide film and carbon-containing contamination introduced by the process environment. By adding a layer of SiO2 mask between SiC and the original metal mask together with ultrasonic cleaning and oxygen plasma cleaning process, the sample surface roughness was effectively reduced from 1.090 to 0.055 nm. Moreover, this method supplies a valuable reference for solving the problem of surface contamination caused by plasma etched.

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Acknowledgement

This work was supported by National Key Research and Development Project [Grant Number 2018YFB2002700] and Science Foundation of the Chinese Academy of Science [Grant Number 201510280052 XMXX201200019933].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, 100029, China

    Lihuan Zhao, Haiping Shang, Dahai Wang, Yang Liu, Miao Xue, Jiahan Yu & Weibing Wang

  2. Kunshan Branch, Institute of Microelectronics of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Suzhou, 215347, China

    Haiping Shang

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  1. Lihuan Zhao
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Correspondence to Haiping Shang.

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Zhao, L., Shang, H., Wang, D. et al. Surface cleaning process for plasma-etched SiC wafer. Appl. Phys. A 126, 617 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-020-03774-1

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