Lam Research Corporation announced the launch of a new atomic layer deposition (ALD) process for depositing low-fluorine-filled tungsten films, marking the addition of a new member to its industry-leading ALTUS® product line. Through the industry's first low-fluorine tungsten (LFW) ALD process, the ALTUS Max E series can help memory chip manufacturers cope with the many key challenges they are currently facing, thereby promoting the continuous shrinking of 3D NAND and DRAM device sizes.
This new system based on Lam Research Corporation's industry-leading memory manufacturing product portfolio is gradually attracting the attention of the global market. After its launch, it has been put into use by the world’s major 3D NAND and DRAM manufacturers, and has been used in many new technologies and products. Research and development.
TIm Archer, Chief Operating Officer of Lam Research Corporation, said: "As consumers continue to improve the performance requirements of electronic equipment, we need larger capacity and better performance memory, and deposition and etching process technology is the production of advanced memory chips. The key. The release of the ALTUS Max E series of products further expands our product portfolio for memory manufacturing, and can help customers firmly grasp the opportunities brought by the next wave of industry. In the past twelve months, 3D NAND technology has achieved rapid development, and our corresponding equipment delivery volume has also doubled, so that we have the largest share of the 3D NAND deposition and etching equipment market."
As chip manufacturers continue to increase the number of memory cell layers in 3D NAND, two major problems have become increasingly prominent for the tungsten deposition process in word line filling applications. First, the fluorine diffused from the tungsten film to the dielectric layer will cause a variety of physical defects; secondly, the accumulated stress in the device with logarithm over 48 will be higher, which will cause excessive bending and deformation of the device. These defects and deformations will affect the product yield, resulting in a decline in the electrical performance and reliability of the device. The above problems require us to greatly reduce the fluorine content and internal stress of the tungsten film used in 3D NAND. In addition, as key dimensions continue to shrink, reducing resistance will become more challenging for DRAM buried word lines and metal gate/metal contact applications in logic components.
Sesha Varadarajan, vice president of Lam Research Corporation's Deposition Products Division, said: "As memory chip manufacturers continue to move toward smaller process nodes, the device structures that need to be filled have become narrower, the aspect ratio has become larger, and the structure itself has become increasingly complex. Fanlin’s new low-fluorine tungsten atomic layer deposition solution uses a controlled surface reaction to adjust the stress and fluorine content while maintaining tungsten filling performance and production efficiency, and effectively reduce electrical resistance. Compared with traditional chemical vapor deposition ( Compared with CVD) tungsten filling, the ALTUS Max E series product process can reduce the detected fluorine by 100 times, the internal stress by 10 times, and the thin film resistivity by 30%. This will help our customers cope with the size reduction of their current devices The most critical challenge facing system integration."
The ALTUS Max E series products using LFW ALD technology can provide a unique full ALD deposition process, using more than 1,000 different process modules in production, and can make full use of Panlin's PNL® (pulse nucleation layer) technology—— This technology has been leading the industry for 15 consecutive years and is regarded as the industry benchmark for tungsten atomic layer deposition. With this technology, Fanlin leads the transformation from chemical vapor deposition tungsten nucleation to atomic layer vapor deposition tungsten nucleation, and relies on its ALTUS® Max with PNLxT™, ALTUS® Max with LRWxT™, and ALTUS® Max ExtremeFill™ A series of products, while improving filling performance, further promoted the development of low-resistance tungsten solutions, and continued Fanlin's leading position in this field.
In addition, the ALTUS series products use the Panlin Four Station Module (QSM) architecture, which can effectively reduce the fluorine content, stress and resistance, and realize the optimization of tungsten nucleation and tungsten filling stations. At the same time, since the station temperature can be set independently, the filling performance will not be sacrificed while achieving the above optimization. By providing up to 12 pedestals for each system, the QSM configuration can also maximize the production efficiency of the full ALD process, thereby achieving the highest device production efficiency in the industry.