Selective Etch Product Family
Products
Selective Etch
Lam’s suite of selective etch solutions enables the isotropic removal of materials from wafer surfaces without modifying or damaging neighboring materials. Delivering ultra-high selectivity and angstrom-scale precision, Lam selective etch solutions are designed to meet chipmaker requirements in the development of advanced 3D logic and memory structures.
Industry Challenges
The need for increasingly dense, highly performant and energy efficient semiconductors is driving new technological inflection points to support the development of advanced logic and memory chips. As FinFET devices are beginning to reach their scaling limits, leading chipmakers are transitioning to gate-all-around (GAA) or nanosheet structures. In memory, NAND flash has already successfully shifted to three dimensional structures – dynamic random access memory (DRAM) is expected to follow soon.
These technological inflection points necessitate a three-dimensional approach to chipmaking, in which materials are removed from wafer surfaces both selectively and isotropically – or uniformly in all directions. To achieve this, chipmakers require new extraordinarily complex manufacturing techniques to perform previously unthinkable processes like vertical and lateral sculpting of nanoscale features that require angstrom-level precision to avoid removing, modifying, or damaging other critical material layers during the etch process.
Lam’s breakthrough suite of selective etch solutions delivers the ultra-high selectivity and precision etch capabilities needed to develop and manufacture 3D advanced logic and memory chip structures.
Key Customer Benefits
- Isotropic material removal coupled with angstrom-scale precision – even at extremely high aspect ratios – delivers optimal chip performance
- Atomic-scale process control helps to prevent loss of critical materials, unwanted surface modification or damage that can cause chip degradation and defectivity
- Advanced surface treatments to control physical and electrical interfacial properties
- Comprehensive selection of isotropic etch technologies, novel chemistries and tunability to support future scaling needs
- Groundbreaking treatment and conditioning for wafer surfaces, which improves device speed and performance
Product Offerings
- Argos®
- Prevos®
- Selis®
Key Applications
- Dummy poly removal
- SiGe removal (GAA)
- Oxide recess
- Si trimming
- Source/drain deposition preclean
- Low-k material removal
- Surface decontamination and modification