The current industrial process of choice for Deep Reactive Ion Etching (DRIE) of 3D features, e.g. Through-Silicon Vias (TSVs), Microelectromechanical Systems (MEMS), etc., is the Bosch process, which uses alternative SF6 etch cycles and C4F8-based sidewall passivation cycles in a time-sequenced mode. An alternative, potentially faster and more accurate process is to have wafers pass under spatially-divided reaction zones, which are individually separated by so-called N2-gas bearings ‘curtains’ of heights down to 10–20 μm. In addition, the feature sidewalls can be protected by replacing the C4F8-based sidewall passivation cycles by cycles forming chemisorbed and highly uniform passivation layers of Al2O3 or SiO2 deposited by Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD), also in a spatially-divided mode. ALD is performed either in thermal mode, or plasma-assisted mode in order to achieve near room-temperature processing.
For metal filling of 3D-etched TSVs, or for deposition of 2D metal conductor lines one can use Laser-Induced Forward Transfer (LIFT) of metals. LIFT is a maskless, ‘solvent’-free deposition method, utilizing different types of pulsed lasers to deposit thin material (e.g. Cu, Au, Al, Cr) layers with μm-range resolution from a transparent carrier (ribbon) onto a close-by acceptor substrate. It is a dry, single-step, room temperature process in air, suitable for different types of interconnect fabrication, e.g. TSV filling and redistribution layers (RDL), without the use of wet chemistry.
Impact of Sidewall Passivation and Channel Composition on InxGa1-xAs FinFET Performance