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COMET

Metallic Contamination and Component Performance.

The semiconductor industry has the particularity to evolve very quickly according to the needs of consumers. These needs are growing, particularly in the fields of computing or telecommunications, and have led to an increasingly important integration of circuits using heterogeneous technologies with secure integrated memories.

The decrease in circuit dimensions involves the use of an increased number of transistors. It was therefore necessary to reduce the size and complexity of the structure of the bricks forming the transistors as well as their insulating structures. These constraints required a crucial effort on contamination levels. Indeed, a very low dose of contaminants is enough to destroy the functional capabilities of a circuit.

This problem has led expert companies using these heterogeneous technologies with secure embedded memories such as STMicroelectronics or Atmel, to reinforce their policy in terms of contamination management and tolerance thresholds of the elements to be monitored. Similarly, SMEs such as Ion Beam Services subcontractor in ion implantation and equipment manufacturer must characterize the level of contaminants and take them into account in the manufacture of equipment.

With the implementation of shared research tools between public and private stakeholders of the microelectronics cluster, the CIM PACA (Integrated Center for Microelectronics in Provence Alpes Côte d’Azur) and in particular its “Characterization” platform allows the development of methods and tools for physicochemical and electrical characterization of technologies based on non-volatile memories.

Based on the know-how acquired in the framework of the Arthemis / CIM-Conta Inorganic (Controlled Metallic Contamination) and ICD-Dopants (SIMS Standards) projects, it is a question of establishing a correlation between the level of concentration and the nature of a contaminant on the electrical performance of components through the following steps:

• Controlled contamination of the surface

• Characterization of surface contamination

• Effects of the presence of patterns on contamination

• Transfer of surface contamination to volume

• Electrical measurements

On the other hand, it involves implementing and qualifying or improving various innovative techniques for the control and analysis of these contaminants.