Alternative passivation for silicon (100), environmentally benign manufacturing, and cooperative strategy in semiconductor industry

My personal involvement, as a research graduate student, sponsored by Engineering Research Center, a center created by National Science Foundation and Semiconductor Research Corporation demonstrates that, through industrial research staffs' mentoring, university research can bring innovative environmentally benign manufacturing methods to the U.S. semiconductor industry. Our group has used methoxy to protect the bare silicon surface, because we have identified that the industrial standard, hydrogen passivation of silicon (H-Si) degrades rapidly when exposes to air. In this thesis, two new processing steps are added to make this methoxy passivation compatible to industrial practice. In addition, a preliminary gate oxide test demonstrated that this methoxy terminated silicon (MeO-Si) yielded a thinner ultra thin gate oxide than those wafers cleaned by IBM's conventional RCA and dilute hydrofluoric acid last clean without compromising its reliability. Furthermore, particle count results shown that this MeO-Si has the same particle resistance as H-Si. Further mechanistic and thermodynamic studies are performed such that this process is optimized. As a result, MeO-Si is 49 times more stable than H-Si against air degradation. Through this center, an Environmental Safety and Health incorporated Cost of Ownership is developed in this thesis. This is done by using in vitro studies to evaluate the toxicity of new chemicals used, and by using lifecycle analysis to calculate the amount of untreated chemical, which leaks to the environment. Both of these will give rise to an environmental figure of merit to modify the conventional cost of ownership. In the last section, a strategic analysis of this Engineering Research Center is performed to demonstrated that students are a very important media to (1) facilitating technology transfer to industry, (2) enhancing collaboration along the chain of semiconductor industrial participants.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2000

Author dc:creator

• Chan, Julia Kam Chu, 1972-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Lionel C. Kimerling and Robert Rose.

• Materials Science and Engineering.
• Technology and Policy Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/8850

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/8850