|Publication number||US7838085 B2|
|Application number||US 12/252,846|
|Publication date||Nov 23, 2010|
|Priority date||May 19, 2004|
|Also published as||CA2563044A1, CA2563044C, CN1993490A, EP1749115A2, EP1749115A4, US7444955, US20050257744, US20090035483, WO2005116291A2, WO2005116291A3, WO2005116291B1|
|Publication number||12252846, 252846, US 7838085 B2, US 7838085B2, US-B2-7838085, US7838085 B2, US7838085B2|
|Inventors||William John Boardman, Raul Donate Mercado, Andrew William Tudhope|
|Original Assignee||Sub-One Technology, Inc.|
|Export Citation||BiBTeX, EndNote, RefMan|
|Patent Citations (23), Referenced by (1), Classifications (22), Legal Events (3)|
|External Links: USPTO, USPTO Assignment, Espacenet|
This is a divisional of pending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/850,474 filed May 19, 2004.
The invention relates generally to deposition systems and more particularly to apparatus for coating internal passageways of a workpiece.
During the design and manufacture of components of systems that are to be used within particular industries, important concerns include surface smoothness, hardness, cost and environmental effects of fabrication techniques. As one example, the semiconductor fabrication industry utilizes ultra high purity gas delivery systems in which these concerns are considered in the selection of techniques for manufacturing the system components. Such system components include mass flow controllers, valves, pressure regulators, purifiers, filters and tubing. In the semiconductor industry, corrosion resistance in a gas delivery system is critical to achieving and maintaining a contaminant-free environment. Smoothness plays an important role in controlling turbulence and minimizing moisture-inducing conditions. There are detailed, strict specifications on the cleanliness, smoothness and hardness of materials used in manufacturing components of gas delivery systems, as specified by organizations such as Semiconductor Equipment and Materials International (SEMI). Other industries in which the concerns are important factors include those of the medical and aerospace fields.
Many gas delivery components must meet a Vickers hardness of 300, which is a standard intended to ensure that metal surfaces will not generate scratches upon meeting with each other. Scratching is an issue, since it leads to the generation of particulates. Materials that are selected because they satisfy other requirements may not meet this standard and, therefore, are subjected to elaborate post-manufacturing techniques designed to increase hardness. For example, 316L stainless steel, which is an austenitic alloy made of iron, chromium, nickel and other trace materials, does not intrinsically meet the 300 Vickers hardness requirement until the component is burnished. Unfortunately, burnishing is time-intensive and significantly affects the yield of a manufacturing batch of the components.
One approach to collectively addressing the concerns is to select a base material for certain properties and then coat the base material following shaping of the component. Typically, the coating material is either a metal or a metal-containing compound (such as a ceramic). Coating techniques include chemical vapor deposition (CVD), physical vapor deposition (PVD), plasma spray, electroplating, and sol-gel. For CVD, a gaseous species that includes the coating material may be introduced into a vacuum chamber, so that when the gas is decomposed in the chamber, the coating material is deposited upon the component (i.e., the “workpiece”). In comparison, PVD is a thin film deposition process in the gas phase, wherein the coating material is physically transferred in the vacuum without any chemical reactions. That is, there is no change in chemical composition of the coating material. PVD may be performed by evaporating a target of coating material in vacuum using heating, an ion beam, cathodic arc, or an electron beam. The cathodic arc process may employ a magnetic field to confine an arc having a high current density to the area of the target. By using the magnetic field to steer the arc, a greater portion of the target may be used before replacement is required.
The PVD process offers improved safety and environment conditions, as compared to the typical CVD process, when depositing a metal or metal-containing film, such as titanium, titanium nitride, chromium, and chromium nitride. PVD typically operates in the range of 1 mTorr to 10 mTorr. This is accomplished by using magnetic confinement of the plasma electrons near the cathode, the so called “sputter magnetron,” to enhance the plasma at low pressures. Non-magnetron forms of sputtering can be operated at higher pressures, for example diode sputtering, which can operate up to 1 Torr. In comparison, CVD pressures may be in the range of 50 mTorr to atmospheric, with low pressure CVD (LPCVD) typically being between 100 mTorr and 1 Torr. However, other process reasons may dictate the use of LPCVD. For example, the LPCVD approach may be selected over the PVD process for purposes of reducing the mean free pass and the directionality of gas flows. This may be important for applications in which the workpiece to be coated is one that has a complex geometry.
Coating a workpiece can be particularly problematic when the workpiece includes internal passages, such as those found in valves, pressure regulators, and tubes. As the complexity of the geometry of the workpiece increases, there is a decrease in the ability to select a coating process on the basis of maximizing environmental and human safety. U.S. Pat. No. 5,026,466 to Wesemeyer et al. describes a solution which may be used in a limited number of applications for coating internal passageways. In Wesemeyer et al., the cathode (i.e., the target formed of the coating material) is positioned within the cavity of the workpiece. For example, when the workpiece is a tube, the cathode is positioned within the internal passageway through the tube. In operation, the material from the cathode surface is evaporated and is deposited on the internal surface of the workpiece. Optionally, the workpiece is connected as the anode. That is, a negative voltage may be applied to the workpiece so as to provide the condition for inducing evaporation of material from the cathode located within the workpiece.
While the Wesemeyer et al. patent and patents to Gorokhovsky (U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,435,900 and 6,663,755) describe coating apparatus that perform well in various applications, performance factors such as coating uniformity may be significantly affected when the workpiece is geometrically complex.
An apparatus for coating surfaces of a workpiece having at least one internal passageway includes a plasma source for generating a plasma which includes the coating material, a support to secure a workpiece in a specific orientation in spaced apart relationship with respect to the plasma source, and a plasma flow system to direct a controlled flow of the plasma through each internal passageway of the secured workpiece. The apparatus may include a particular combination of various subsystems, such as the plasma generation system, the workpiece support system, the plasma flow system, an ionization excitation system configured to increase ionization within or around the workpiece, a biasing system for applying a selected voltage pattern to the workpiece, and a two-chamber system that enables the plasma generation to take place at a first selected pressure and the deposition to occur at a second selected pressure.
For uniform coating of internal passageways, it is important to avoid the molecular flow region. That is, the size of the internal diameter of the passageway should be greater than the length of the ion (or atom) mean free path. Continuum flow is desired where the internal diameter is greater than one hundred times the mean free path.
The workpiece support system is configured to provide plasma flow through the internal passageways of the workpiece. A pressure gradient is established within the workpiece. The workpiece is secured such that each opening of the workpiece is either an evacuation port or an entrance port for the plasma. A flow control member, such as a throttle valve, may be adjusted to balance the flow rate and pressure gradient through the workpiece. The voltage biasing system may apply a negative pulse bias having a particular duty cycle which is selected to allow ions to be replenished between periods of attracting the ionized coating material to the surfaces of the workpiece. The magnitude of the bias can be adjusted to control the arrival angle of the ions with respect to the surfaces of the workpiece, allowing coatings of geometric shapes having high aspect ratio features.
For embodiments that include the two-chamber system, the apparatus may be one that uses physical vapor deposition (PVD) with a source chamber kept at a relatively low pressure and a deposition chamber maintained at a higher pressure. It is desirable to use PVD for metal sources, as compared to CVD, due to safety and environmental concerns. PVD techniques may be employed without use of a two-chamber system by selecting diode sputtering.
The high-pressure deposition chamber may have smaller dimensions as compared to the low pressure source chamber. The two chambers may be coupled by a necked down (or constriction) area which is biased to repel ions and prevent buildup of film. This constriction helps prevent backflow from the higher pressure chamber into the source chamber. A gas, such as argon, can be introduced to provide the increased pressure. As another possibility, a pair of low pressure source chambers may be provided, so that the two sources cooperate in feeding the high pressure deposition chamber.
Any plasma will contain various ratios of ions to non-ionized gas atoms or molecules. Ionization can range from 0.1% to 100%. In general, higher ionization leads to more conformal coatings. The increase in pressure from the source chamber to the deposition chamber may cause a loss of ionization. A solution is to provide an ionization excitation system to increase ionization within or near the workpiece. As one possible embodiment of such a system, a microwave source may be used to provide high ionization around the workpiece. Alternatively, plasma sources such as electron cyclotron resonance (ECR), distributed ECR, and radio frequency (RF) sources, may be employed to increase ionization.
A preferred approach to achieving a target level of ionization, where an increase is desired, is to generate a plasma within the internal passageway itself, using the passageway of the workpiece as a hollow cathode. Anytime the plasma is generated external to the workpiece, there is some decrease of ionization as the ions and atoms flow from the entrance toward the exit. Potentially, this causes a non-uniformity in the coating film along the length of the internal passageway, with the coating thickness at the exit approaching zero as the passageway length increases and as the passageway diameter decreases. By using plasma generation throughout the length of the passageway (via the hollow cathode approach), a uniform coating can be achieved, even in the case of very long passageways.
An advantage of the invention is that the coating apparatus allows a manufacturer to provide an end product which offers the benefits of a metallic exterior, such as corrosion resistance and high vacuum integrity, while allowing the use of a less expensive base material, such as a plastic. The metallic coating then serves as a functional, protective barrier to the base material. Another advantage of the invention is that an increase in coating uniformity can be achieved.
With reference to
The coating apparatus 10 includes a plasma source 12. While other techniques may be used (e.g., CVD), PVD is preferred for reasons that were previously stated. Cathodic arc techniques provide a highly ionized source plasma (which can approach 100% ionization), with a small amount of background gas (reactive or inert) having lower ionization being introduced. Alternatively, the background gas can be ionized and can include neutral source atoms, as in many of the various known sputtering approaches. The selection of settings for different operational parameters will vary in dependence upon the selection of techniques, but again the common feature is the “flow-through” feature.
The plasma source 12 is associated with a relatively low pressure source chamber 14. The pressure within this chamber may be maintained using a high vacuum pump 16 and a turbo pump 18. By way of example, the pressure within the chamber 14 may be within the range of 1 mTorr to 10 mTorr, where the plasma source is the preferred PVD source. In comparison, a CVD source would require a significantly higher pressure, such as 50 mTorr.
In addition to the low pressure source chamber 14, there is a high pressure deposition chamber 20. The pressure difference between the two chambers is maintained by the combination of a second vacuum pump 26 and a blower 30, with pressure control valves 22 and 24 enabling pressure regulation. An acceptable pressure range for the deposition chamber 20 is 50 mTorr to 1 Torr. Where the desired pressure is closer to the 1 Torr end of this range, the one-chamber, diode sputtering embodiment of
Mounted within the deposition chamber 20 is the workpiece support system, which includes a support member 34. In this embodiment, the support system also includes a fastening member 36 having four vertical projections 38 that secure a workpiece to the support member 34. Alternatively, the fastening member 36 and its vertical projections may be considered to be the workpiece in
Referring now to
Three pressure regions (P1, P2 and P3) are shown in
The duty cycle and magnitude of the voltage pattern from the bias system 52 will have an effect on re-sputtering, particularly when coating small diameter tubes having a high aspect ratio. In general, duty cycles between one percent and seventy-five percent should be used for such applications. Within this general range, the optimal duty cycle will vary in dependence upon the magnitude of the bias and upon the chamber pressurization.
In the two-chamber system of
One of the factors that define the overall pressure gradient is the geometry of a “necked down” (or constriction) port 58. Preferably, this port is biased using a path bias system 60 which provides a voltage having a polarity opposite of that of the part bias system 52 described with reference to
As previously noted, a gas supply 62 may be connected to the deposition chamber to provide an adjustable background gas flow rate. In
An issue with the increase in pressures of the two chambers 14 and 20 is that the plasma will begin to lose ionization. That is, as pressure increases, ionization is reduced. A high ionization is needed for plasma immersion ion implantation deposition (PIIID). Thus, an ion excitation system 66 may be included with the coating apparatus 10 of
When considering the flow rates and pressures required through the workpiece 40, if the internal section is approximated to be the internal section of a long circular tube with laminar flow, Poisuille's equation can be used:
where Q is the throughput or pressure times the volumetric flow rate, d is the passageway diameter, P is the average pressure ((P1+P2)/2), l is the passageway length, η is the viscosity, P1 is the pressure at the workpiece opening to the deposition chamber, and P2 is the pressure at the workpiece opening to the pump. As the pressure gradient is increased by opening the throttle valve to the pump 26 (reducing P2), Q will increase and the pressure in the interior passageway of the workpiece will drop. If the pressure gradient is further increased, Q will continue to increase until it reaches a maximum at which the gas is flowing at the speed of sound. When Q reaches its maximum, the equation no longer applies and the condition is referred to as “choked” or “critical” flow. In the equation, d is raised to the fourth power and will have a very significant effect on Q and pressure gradient. This is the reason for providing an adjustable alternative pumping path to the deposition chamber, effectively providing an alternative larger value of d.
Inside the workpiece, it is desirable to maintain laminar flow and avoid molecular flow if uniform coating is to be achieved. To avoid the directionality of typical low pressure cathodic arc or sputtering, higher pressure deposition (50 mTorr to 1 Torr) should be used. For laminar flow, the Knudson number, Kn<0.01, and Reynolds number Rn<1200, may be used, where Kn=λ/d, where λ=mean free path of ions or atoms, Rn=4 m/(kTπη)×(Q/d), where Q is the “throughput in” Pa-L/s, k=boltzmans constant and η is the viscosity. The Knudson number shows the transition from the molecular flow regime (Kn<1) to the viscous or turbulent flow regime. For a 1 cm diameter tube, flow will move out of molecular flow into transition region flow at λ<1 cm. For N2, this corresponds to a pressure of 0.8 Pa (6 mTorr), and the flow will be fully viscous (if Rn<1200) at λ=0.01 cm, which for N2 corresponds to a pressure of 65 Pa (488 mTorr).
While the workpiece support system is shown as being stationary within the deposition chamber 20, it is possible to provide a workpiece support member 34 that can be moved either or both of horizontally and vertically, thereby promoting coating uniformity. As another possibility, the support member rotates about a vertical axis, which may be helpful for coating certain types of workpieces having complex geometries.
A second embodiment is shown in
The passages from the source chambers 96 and 98 to the deposition chamber 100 are controlled by throttle valves 110 and 112. While not shown, the necked down regions 108 are preferably biased to prevent buildup of coating material. Another element of the pressure-control system is the throttle-controlled pumping arrangement 114 of the deposition chamber.
Within the deposition chamber 100 is a workpiece 120 that is secured in position by a workpiece support system 122. The workpiece support system enables rotation of the workpiece (as indicated by the curvature of line 124) and enables upward and downward movement of the workpiece (as indicated by line 126). Preferably, the workpiece is also movable in the horizontal directions.
In operation, the throttle valves 110 and 112 regulate the flow of plasma from the two source chambers 96 and 98 into the single deposition chamber 100. The gas supply 118 may function as a third gas inlet to the chamber. The exhaust from the chamber is determined by the throttle-controlled pumping arrangement 114. The workpiece 120 is secured such that a pressure gradient is established through the internal passageway or passageways of the workpiece. The workpiece support system 122 is enabled to move the workpiece vertically and horizontally and is able to rotate the workpiece. Optionally, the embodiment also includes a magnetic manipulation system in which the coating process is raster scanned by continuously changing the magnetic field within the plasma in and around the workpiece. This aspect of changing the magnetic field to localize the coating process may be used in embodiments that do not include coating internal passageways of a workpiece. For example, the magnetic field within a plasma surrounding a semiconductor substrate may be manipulated in order to ensure proper step coverage at trenches along the surface of the semi-conductor substrate. The magnetic field manipulation is particularly effective when combined with the ability to linearly and/or rotationally reposition the workpiece within the deposition chamber.
A third embodiment of the invention is shown in
A negative bias 134 is applied to the cathode 136, while the anode 138 is placed at ground potential. The negative bias may be a fixed potential or may be a pulsed signal. Due to the higher pressures used in diode sputtering, higher bias voltages are often required, such as voltages greater than 3 kV. This is due to the fact that the mean free path of the ions accelerating through the plasma sheath may become less than the thickness of the sheath, resulting in collisions and loss of energy. The increased voltage compensates for this energy loss. However, water cooling of the cathode may be necessitated. The cathode may consist of an elemental metal, such as titanium or chromium, or may be a metal alloy.
As is known to persons skilled in the art of sputtering, the voltage potential across the anode 138 and cathode 136 will ionize the background gas and ions will be accelerated into the cathode. As a consequence, metal atoms will be transferred to the gas stream by the momentum transfer. The pressure gradient draws the gas stream through the workpiece.
The gas stream contains the coating material, such as chromium. Due to the reactive nature of the metal ions, the coating material tends to adhere to the portions of the workpiece closest to the cathode, while less coating is deposited at the portion of the workpiece closest to the pump. The embodiment of
Another aspect of the invention is the use of a hollow cathode to maintain ionization within the workpiece. This technique requires that the mean free path of an electron is less than the diameter of the workpiece internal passageway. Under this condition, the electron will oscillate between the walls of the passageway upon application of the negative bias by the power supply 140. The oscillation will result in multiple ionization collisions and will create plasma within the internal passageway. When coating a workpiece with multiple internal passageways with varying internal diameters, the process pressure is adjusted such that the electron mean free path is just slightly less than the smallest diameter passageway, so that all passageways will have plasma internally generated and all large passageways will maintain the plasma. If λ/d=1 is set as a requirement for an internal hollow cathode plasma, where λ is the mean free path of the electron and d is the smallest internal tube diameter, then as the diameter becomes smaller, the pressure will increase (to decrease λ). Thus, the operating pressure will be tuned to generate a plasma in this smallest internal spacing of the workpiece, or set of workpieces, being coated. The tuning can be achieved by adjustments of the throttle valves 22 and 24 and/or adjustments of the gas flow rate through the inlet 130.
At the operating pressures required for use of an internal hollow cathode and the use of the flow-through techniques, the spacing between the cathode and a workpiece 142 being coated (and the anode 138) is significant. The decreased mean free path of the sputtered atoms will increase backsputtering of the atoms to the cathode and loss to the walls of the deposition chamber 132. This requires closer spacing to the cathode, so that the flow-through pressure gradient will pull the sputter atoms into the workpiece before they are lost. In practice, there is a balance between this requirement for close spacing and the concern that arcing or nonuniform sputtering will occur as a result of the close spacing. The embodiment of
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|U.S. Classification||427/569, 118/723.00E, 427/457, 427/238, 427/230, 427/237, 118/723.0ER, 204/192.1, 118/723.00R|
|International Classification||H05H1/24, C23C14/04, C23C14/50, C23C16/00, C23C14/32|
|Cooperative Classification||C23C14/50, C23C14/046, C23C14/325, H01J37/32357|
|European Classification||C23C14/32A, C23C14/04D, C23C14/50, H01J37/32M16|
|Dec 18, 2009||AS||Assignment|
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