Ultra clean processing of silicon surfaces 2000 : proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium on Ultra Clean Processing of Silicon Surfaces (UCPSS 2000), held in Ostend, Belgium, September 18-20, 2000

The proceedings of the Fifth International Symposium on Ultra Clean Processing of Silicon Surfaces cover all aspects of ultra-clean Si-technology: cleaning, contamination control, Si-surface chemistry and topography, and its relationship to device performance and process yield. New areas of concern include: cleaning at the interconnect level, resist strip and polymer removal (dry and wet), cleaning and contamination aspects of metallization, wafer backside cleaning and cleaning after chemical-mechanical-polisihing (CMP). Judging from the large number of papers dealing with wet cleaning processes, it is clear that this is still the dominant cleaning technology at present. Various papers deal with single-wafer wet cleaning which is expected to replace the more standard batch-type cleaning systems in various applications in the coming years. At the previous Symposium a lot of interesting work was presented on the use of ozonated DI-water as a replacement for sulphuric-based mixtures, especially for resist strip. A lot of progress has been made in this area during 1999-2000 and many new exciting results were presented on this topic. Clear progress has also been made in understanding the effects of megasonics and in the area of cleaning after chemical-mechanical polishing (CMP). Last but not least, a lot of interesting work was presented on environmentally benign processing technology.