Design of Experiment (DOE) Response Surface Methods (RSM) to Optimize Wafer MOSFET Polysilicon Gate Etching Production with R in 10 Minutes

In integrated circuit (IC) manufacturing, engineers need to ensure the polycrystalline lines on the wafer are perfectly straight up. There are millions and millions of these tiny lines with a square millimeter area, and these billion lines are created together in a plasma chamber. Today we will introduce an experiment method to find the best equipment settings, the method of Response Surface.

Reactive-ion etching (RIE) is a microchip silicon wafer etching technology in chip fabrication. It uses chemically reactive plasma to remove patterned silicon dioxide “film” deposited on wafers. The plasma is generated under a low-pressure vacuum by Radio Frequency electromagnetic field, with chemical gas vapor injected in. The right combination of Radio Frequency (RF) electric field power, the pressure of the vacuum, and hydrogen bromide (HBr) gas injected into the etch chamber are the key factors lead to the quality silicon wafer. Engineers will need to ensure the profile of the polycrystalline silicon gates isotopic, that is, the walls of the etch lines should be vertically perpendicular to the substrate in all directions.

In this study, the engineers would like to find the right processing settings for this etching equipment. As this is a million-dollar business, we are going to help them, using design of experiment methods.

Data and sample R commends (user needs to load data to R)

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