Metrology for ultrathin films and shallow implants

Fully automated tool features twin loadports and pattern recognition for the mapping of thickness, elemental and chemical uniformity, and non-destructive depth profiling of product wafers

Thermo Electron has evolved its Theta 300 thin film research tool to manage the transition of new gate dielectrics and other thin structures from development into production.

Thermo's patented parallel angle resolved X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy technique produces accurate and repeatable measurement of thickness and composition in ultra-thin structures.

The new fully automated Theta 300XT tool features twin loadports and full host integration and pattern recognition for measurement of product wafers.

Theta 300XT features 200mm and 300mm wafer mapping of thickness, elemental and chemical uniformity, coupled with non-destructive depth profiling to determine interface chemistry.

This unique capability allows a metrology of thickness and composition that relates directly to device electrical performance.

With the development of this new at-line tool, Thermo says it is supporting the current and future needs of the semiconductor and nanotech industries as they introduce novel materials and ultra-thin structures.

Semiconductor device speed can no longer be improved by simple scaling.

Engineers and scientists have used the Theta 300 research tool to develop processes with new gate dielectrics, barrier metals, and shallow implants.

These processes are now entering production, and Thermo says its unique measurement capability is required on product wafers with greater throughput and precision.

Theta 300XT addresses this need.

Thermo Electron manufactures a range of instruments for surface, ultra-thin film and thin film analysis.

It supplies systems for X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), auger electron spectroscopy (AES) and multi-technique instruments.

Escalab 250 is a high-performance, multi-technique XPS instrument, Theta Probe is a small-spot XPS instrument capable of producing angle-resolved XPS data without tilting the sample, Theta 300 provides data from semiconductor wafers and Microlab 350 is a high-performance scanning auger spectrometer.

In addition to complete systems, it manufactures surface analysis components for techniques such as XPS, ARXPS, AES, SAM, UPS and ISS.

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