Study on fab environment induced Al and Cu metal corrosion by TEM failure analysis

Contamination-free manufacturing environment is essential for semiconductor wafer fabs. Any contaminants from production line such as process tools and chambers need to be closely monitored and well controlled so as to avoid the direct exposure of the production wafers to these contaminants. In this paper, we discussed two typical metal corrosion issues induced by wafer fab environmental contamination, i.e. aluminum (Al) metal corrosion by fluorine (F)/chlorine (Cl), copper (Cu) metal corrosion by iodine (I). We presented detailed transmission electron microscope (TEM) analysis of the defects related to metal corrosion, helping fabs to identify the root cause and to take corrective actions.