JPH09118600A - Film forming device - Google Patents

Abstract

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide such a film forming device with which the film forming rate can be easily determined according to arbitrary conditions of film forming to device the film forming time and the conditions of film forming can be freely changed. SOLUTION: The reaction gas is supplied to a reaction chamber 13 at specified pressure and high frequency voltage is applied between electrodes 11 to generate glow discharge. Thereby, a desired film can be formed on a substrate at a specified film forming rate. The film forming rate changes when conditions of film forming (such as the flow rate of gas, pressure and electric power) are changed. In this method, by inputting the film forming conditions and the film thickness, the film forming rate according to the database 15 is outputted based on the film forming conditions. Then the film forming time is calculated based on the film forming rate and the film thickness inputted. The high frequency voltage is applied from a high frequency power supply 12 on the electrodes 11 for the film forming time thus determined. Therefore, a CVD film of desired film thickness can be produced and conditions for the process can be easily changed.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a film forming apparatus, and more particularly to an improvement of a thin film forming apparatus for forming an insulating film, an electrode wiring film, a semiconductor film, etc., such as a CVD apparatus and a sputtering apparatus.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art A CVD apparatus is known as one of film forming apparatuses. The CVD apparatus supplies one or several kinds of compound gas consisting of elements constituting the thin film material or a simple substance gas onto the substrate to form a desired thin film by a chemical reaction in the vapor phase or on the surface of the substrate. Thermal energy and plasma discharge are used to excite gas molecules. There is also photoexcitation. For example, optical CVD equipment, thermal CVD equipment, plasma CVD equipment,
A MOCVD device or the like is known.

In this CVD apparatus, it is necessary to set predetermined conditions in order to control the CVD reaction. That is, material selection, temperature selection, and growth rate data acquisition. The acquired growth rate data includes growth temperature, raw material concentration, gas flow rate, pressure and transfer ratio. As described above, in the CVD apparatus, the growth rate (deposition rate) of the grown film varies depending on the film forming conditions such as the gas flow rate, the pressure, and the RF power supplied. Therefore, in order to obtain a desired film thickness, it is necessary to calculate the film forming rate for each film forming condition.

However, the conventional method of calculating the film formation rate is
Sampling was performed under the same film forming condition using an actual film forming apparatus, and the film forming rate under the film forming condition was individually calculated. That is, in the conventional method, the film forming rate had to be sampled every time the film forming conditions were changed, which was extremely inefficient. For example, in a thermal CVD apparatus, each time the gas flow rate, gas pressure, and applied power differ, the film formation rate is actually measured and detected (sampling) according to the values, and the film formation rate under that condition is obtained. .
Then, in the actual film formation, the film formation time was calculated based on the film formation rate obtained by sampling in this way, and a CVD film having a desired film thickness was formed on the substrate.

[0005]

As a result, despite a slight change in the film forming conditions, on-site sampling had to be performed for each change. Therefore, there is a problem that the work is extremely complicated and it is difficult to freely change the film forming conditions.

[0006]

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a film forming apparatus capable of freely changing film forming conditions. Further, an object of the present invention is to provide a film forming apparatus capable of easily obtaining a film forming speed from arbitrary film forming conditions and determining a film forming time. Still another object of the present invention is to automate the calculation of the film forming time.

[0007]

According to a first aspect of the present invention, in a film forming apparatus in which the film forming speed differs depending on the film forming conditions, a speed storing means for storing the film forming speed for each of the film forming conditions. A film forming condition input means for inputting film forming conditions, a film thickness input means for inputting a desired film thickness, and a speed reading means for reading a film forming speed from the speed storing means based on the inputted film forming conditions. And a film forming time calculating means for calculating the film forming time based on the read film forming speed and the above-mentioned film thickness.

[0008]

According to the first aspect of the present invention, when the film forming condition is input, the film forming speed corresponding to the film forming condition is read out. Then, by inputting the film thickness, the film formation time can be calculated based on this film formation rate. That is, the film formation time can be easily obtained according to the film thickness under different film formation conditions. The speed storage means stores the film forming speed for each of the different film forming conditions.

[0009]

BEST MODE FOR CARRYING OUT THE INVENTION An embodiment of a film forming apparatus according to the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram showing a film forming apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.
FIG. 2 is a block diagram showing the main part of the film forming apparatus. FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram showing the overall configuration of the film forming apparatus.

As shown in FIG. 3, this film forming apparatus is a plasma CVD apparatus and forms a thin film by plasma discharge decomposition of a reactive gas under reduced pressure.
A high frequency voltage (for example, 13.56 MHz) is applied from a high frequency power source 12 between the electrodes 11 facing each other to generate plasma of a reactive gas, and a thin film is formed on the substrate by plasma decomposition. That is, in this plasma CVD apparatus, the flow rate of the reaction gas, the pressure in the reaction chamber 13, the R
The film forming rate is different depending on the film forming conditions such as F power.

The plasma CVD apparatus has a film forming controller 14 for controlling the high frequency power source 12 and the like. The film formation control device 14 can control the application time of the high frequency power applied from the high frequency power supply 12 to the electrode 11. The film forming control device 14 is configured so that film forming conditions and the like can be input, and the device is a database 15
(A hard disk device, a magnetic tape device, a magneto-optical disk device, or the like) is accessible.

That is, as shown in FIG. 2, the film formation control device 14 includes a CPU / RO connected to each other via a bus line.
It is composed of M, RAM, I / O, keyboard KBD, and the like. The film formation control device 14 is connected to the database 15 via an I / O which is an input / output device.

The plasma CVD apparatus including the film formation controller 14 and the database 15 is shown in FIG.
As shown in FIG. That is, the speed storage means 21 (made up of the database 15 and the like) that stores the film formation speed for each film formation condition, the film formation condition input means 22 (keyboard and the like) that inputs the film formation conditions, and the film thickness A film thickness input means 23 (keyboard or the like) for inputting, and a speed reading means 24 (CPU / I / O or the like) for reading the film forming speed from the speed storing means 21 based on the inputted film forming conditions are read out. Film forming time calculating means 25 (CPU, ROM, etc.) for calculating the film forming time based on the film forming speed and the above film thickness
And

In the plasma CVD apparatus having the above structure, the reaction gas is supplied into the reaction chamber 13 controlled to a predetermined pressure, and a high frequency voltage is applied between the parallel plate electrodes 11 to cause glow discharge. generate. As a result, a desired film is formed on the substrate at a predetermined film formation rate and in a desired thickness. At this time, if the film forming conditions (gas flow rate, pressure, RF power, etc.) are changed, the film forming rate becomes different.

Therefore, when the film forming conditions and the desired film thickness are input under the predetermined film forming conditions, the corresponding film forming speed is read from the database 15 based on the film forming conditions. Then, the film formation time is calculated based on the film formation rate and the input film thickness. Further, the film formation control device 14 controls the high frequency power supply 12 based on the film formation time.
That is, the high frequency power supply 12 applies the high frequency voltage power to the electrode 11 for a predetermined time. As a result, the CV of the desired film thickness
A D film can be produced.

When the film forming conditions are changed, if the film forming conditions are input, the corresponding film forming rate can be obtained from the database 15. Then, the high-frequency voltage application time to the electrode 11 is determined by the input of the film thickness, and a film having a desired film thickness can be obtained. That is, this CVD apparatus can easily change the process conditions.

Further, in the above CVD apparatus, the film thickness can be confirmed by the film forming time and the film forming conditions. Further, if the film thickness is measured under the film forming condition every time the film is formed by such a CVD apparatus, the database can be constructed from the measured values.

In the present invention, the plasma CV is used.
The present invention can be applied to a thermal CVD device, a photo CVD device, etc. other than the D device. Furthermore, the present invention can be applied to a thin film forming apparatus other than the CVD apparatus, such as a vacuum vapor deposition apparatus, a sputtering apparatus, and an epitaxial growth apparatus. When applied to these apparatuses, the database of the film forming rate is constructed based on the film forming conditions, as in the case of the above-mentioned embodiment.

[0019]

According to the present invention, the film formation time for each film thickness can be accurately obtained even by changing the film formation conditions, and any change in these film formation conditions and film thickness can be dealt with. . That is, the process conditions can be easily changed.
Further, by accumulating a large amount of data on the film formation rate, the accuracy of film thickness control in the film formation apparatus can be improved. further,
The film thickness can be confirmed by the film forming time and the film forming conditions.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a functional block diagram showing a film forming apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a schematic diagram showing an outline of a hardware configuration of a film forming apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram showing an overall configuration of a film forming apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.

[Explanation of symbols]

 21 speed storage means, 22 film forming condition input means, 23 film thickness input means, 24 speed reading means, 25 film forming time calculating means.

─────────────────────────────────────────────────── ─── Continuation of the front page (51) Int.Cl. ⁶ Identification number Office reference number FI technical display location H01L 21/31 H01L 21/31 C

Claims (1)

[Claims] 1. In a film forming apparatus in which a film forming speed varies depending on film forming conditions, a film speed storing means for storing a film forming speed for each film forming condition and a film forming condition input means for inputting the film forming condition. A film thickness inputting means for inputting a desired film thickness, a speed reading means for reading the film forming speed from the speed storing means based on the inputted film forming conditions, a read film forming speed and the film thickness And a film forming time calculating means for calculating the film forming time based on the above.