Chemical mechanical polishing of Indium phosphide, Gallium arsenide and Indium gallium arsenide films and related environment and safety aspects

As scaling continues with advanced technology nodes in the microelectronic industry to enhance device performance, the performance limits of the conventional substrate materials such as silicon as a channel material in the front-end-of-the-line of the complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) need to be surmounted. These challenges have invigorated research into new materials such as III-V materials consisting of InP, GaAs, InGaAs for n-channel CMOS and Ge for p-channels CMOS to enhance device performance. These III-V materials have higher electron mobility that is required for the n-channel while Ge has high hole mobility that is required for the p-channel. Integration of these materials in future devices requires chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) to achieve a smooth and planar surface to enable further processing. The CMP process of these materials has been associated with environment, health and safety (EH&S) issues due to the presence of P and As that can lead to the formation of toxic gaseous hydrides. The safe handling of As contaminated consumables and post-CMP slurry waste is essential. In this work, the chemical mechanical polishing of InP, GaAs and InGaAs films and the associated environment, health and safety (EH&S) issues are discussed. InP removal rates (RRs) and phosphine generation during the CMP of blanket InP films in hydrogen peroxide-based silica particle dispersions in the presence and absence of three different multifunctional chelating carboxylic acids, namely oxalic acid, tartaric acid, and citric acid are reported. The presence of these acids in the polishing slurry resulted in good InP removal rates (about 400 nm min-1) and very low phosphine generation (< 15 ppb) with very smooth post-polish surfaces (0.1 nm RMS surface roughness). The optimized slurry compositions consisting of 3 wt % silica, 1 wt % hydrogen peroxide and 0.08 M oxalic acid or citric acid that provided the best results on blanket InP films were used to evaluate their planarization capability of patterned InP-STI structures of 200 mm diameter wafers. Cross sectional scanning electron microscope (SEM) images showed that InP in the shallow trench isolation structures was planarized and scratches, slurry particles and smearing of InP were absent. Additionally, wafers polished at pH 6 showed very low dishing values of about 12-15 nm, determined by cross sectional SEM. During the polishing of blanket GaAs, GaAs RRs were negligible with deionized water or with silica slurries alone. They were relatively high in aq. solutions of H2O2 alone and showed a strong pH dependence, with significantly higher RRs in the alkaline region. The addition of silica particles to aq. H2O2 did not increase the GaAs RRs significantly. The evolution of arsenic trihydride (AsH3) during the dissolution of GaAs in aq. H2O2 solution was similarly higher in the basic pH range than in neutral pH or in the acidic pH range. However, no AsH3 was measured during polishing, evidently because of the relatively high water solubility of AsH3. The work done on InGaAs polishing shows that InGaAs RR trends are different from those observed for InP or GaAs. InGaAs RRs at pH 2 are higher than those at pH 10 and highest at pH 4. Dissolution rates (DRs), Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), contact angles, X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), X-Ray Fluorescence Spectroscopy (XRF), zeta potential measurements and calculated Gibbs free energy changes of the reactions involved during polishing and gas formation were used to discuss the observed RRs and hydride gas generation trends and to propose the reaction pathways involved in the material removal and in hydride gas generation mechanisms.