Advanced wet and dry cleaning coming together for next generation

Wafer cleaning is the most frequently repeated step in IC manufacturing. Co mmonly used wet cleaning techniques will remain dominant because of their o verall higher cleaning strength. Alternate processes that either reduce or replace chemical usage are being sought because of the current challenges o f submicron particle removal, environmental impact from high consumption of water and chemicals, integration into cluster tools, as well as increasing costs. Dry cleaning processes will not replace wet cleans, but will rather complement them and can be used in processes where wet cleans are impracti cal or inadequate. We will discuss here the latest advances in new wet and dry cleaning techniques and the much needed synergy between them for semico nductor processing in the next millennium.