An approach to reduce greenhouse gases in the semiconductor industry using F2 dissociated in plasma for CVD chamber cleaning

The gases used in industrial cleaning processes are considered greenhouse gases with a high global warming potential (GWP). It is important to provide a viable alternative chemical vapor deposition (CVD) cleaning gas that is capable of removing efficiently deposited layers on the CVD chamber inner wall and other parts of the apparatus. The cleaning gas has to be environmental friendly in order to avoid accentuation of the global warming phenomena. Besides that, the alternative cleaning gas should be compatible with the existing gas delivery system and the CVD equipment that is already used by industrial companies. Only by fulfilling the three requirements mentioned above is it possible to replace the well-established cleaning gases. In this project, an F2gas mixture for the in-situ cleaning of CVD chambers has been studied and compared with conventional cleaning methods. The conventional cleaning process is defined as a cleaning procedure using either C2F6 in RF plasma discharge or NF3 in remote plasma discharge.