Antenna damage from a plasma TEOS deposition reactor: Relationship with surface charge and RF sensor measurements

We identified antenna damage associated with a PECVD (plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition) TEOS (tetraethoxysilane) process for interlevel dielectric deposition. The damage was isolated to the terminating steps in the recipe depositing 1000 /spl Aring/ of SiO/sub 2/. V/sub s/ (surface charge) measurements on the Keithley Quantox along with our CMOS test chip were used for further characterization of the terminating steps. At the same time, an RF sensor was used to identify the plasma characteristics of the chamber. A design of experiments was done around the RF power and chuck-to-wafer spacing in the terminating sequence in order to minimize damage to the antenna.