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XEI Scientific, Inc. RF Plasma Cleaning Systems for Electron Microscopes
The EVACTRON® Anti-Contaminator and De-Contaminator Updated January 2010
Examples of Evactron Cleaning
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Evactron
Successes
The Evactron® De-Contaminator System has been used to solve various contamination problems by users. Here is a partial list of our successes. Also see Science Papers for more examples in publications. Hitachi S4700: Spansion, Sunnyvale, California, USA
FEI 235 Dual Beam FIB: FEI Company, Hillsboro Oregon, USA
With less than four hours of Evactron cleaning over two days during a demonstration, the contamination deposition rate was brought down from being 2 times over the FEI specification amount to less that 10% of the specification. FEI purchased an Evactron unit for manufacturing to make sure all Dual Beam FIBs are clean on departure.
FEI 235 Dual Beam FIB: AMD, Sunnyvale, California, USA
AMD uses the Dual Beam FIB to study the structure of sub 170 nm copper vias for process control. The use of GIS platinum deposition guns had released organics into the chambers, creating foggy images of these small structures. The installation of an Evactron system allows for faster and clearer imaging of these very small structures.
JEOL
6400: Kimberly Clark, Neenah Wisconsin, USA
JEOL 6400 and JEOL 845: IBM Canada, Bromont, Quebec, Canada
Hitachi
S-4500: IBM San Jose, California, USA
The results were presented at a 1999 Microscopy & Miroanalysis (M&M) conference in the paper “The Removal of Contamination Deposits From Defects in Thin Film Magnetic Disks By Oxidative Cleaning Inside The SEM”, by Sharon Meyers and Ronald Vane.
Hitachi
S-4500: AMD, Sunnyvale, California, USA
Hitachi
S-4700: NIST Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA
Hitachi
S-4700: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, High Temperature Materials Lab, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA
Hitachi S-4700: University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, USA
The user purchased an Evactron system with the automation package. The automation package operates the Hitachi SEM evacuation system with the proper delays to allow for the cooling of the heated aperture before venting the chamber to Evactron operating pressure. The automatic package then operates the plasma clean cycle for 2 minutes. The system is then ready to image specimens again, 40 minutes after the Evactron cleaning cycle. Multiple cleaning cycles were done during installation for testing and demonstration purposes over two days. After installation was completed, an old gold on carbon specimen was imaged. This specimen had shown chronic contamination problems in the past with black squares forming quickly. After Evactron cleaning of the chamber, the specimen showed no black square formation even with dry LN traps during this first test. Cleanliness is maintained by operating the Evactron system on a weekly maintenance cycle.
LEO
1550 and JEOL 6400: University of California, Berkeley, California, USA
Microfabrication Laboratory
The Evactron De-Contaminator (D-C)was set up to operate during every pump down cycle for 100 seconds. By adjusting the gas leak and the vacuum set points for plasma operation, the cleaning takes place while the SEM chamber pumps down through the 0.9 Torr to 0.4 Torr pressure zone. Operating the Evactron D-C adds less than one minute to pump down time and was not noticed by most users. Pump down to high vacuum was speeded up because UV light generated by the plasma is effective at desorbing water vapor from walls during the cleaning cycle in the roughing mode. Cross contamination between specimens has disappeared. Higher resolutions are being observed. UCB Physics Department ordered a third Evactron D-C for the new FEI Sirion SEM in 2003, for use at Lawrence Berkeley Labs.
LEO
1525: NIST, Boulder, Colorado, USA
LEO
1550: Intel, Sacramento, California, USA
Leica S360 SEMs, FEI FIBs, FEI XL30 SEM and FEI Sirion SEM: Wright
Patterson AFB, Dayton Ohio, USA
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