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XEI Scientific, Inc.
The EVACTRON® Anti-Contaminator and De-Contaminator Updated August 2007
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:
Hitachi S4700 - Spansion, Sunnyvale CA
Improved
resolution on 5 year old instrument so that sputtered PT grains
could be seen @ 5KV. < 3nm resolution. User says that the Evactron is the only accessory he can buy for the SEM that will improve the performance of the instrument.
Results: With less than four hours of Evactron cleaning over two days during a demonstration, the contamination deposition rate was brought down from being 2X over the FEI specification amount to less that 10% of the specification. FEI purchased Evactron unit for manufacturing to make sure all dual beam FIBs are clean on departure.
FEI FIBs make use of Gas Injection Systems (GIS) for metal deposition using the ion beam. This technique uses organo-metallic gases that react with the ion beam to deposit metals on the scanned areas. Organic gases are released as a by product and these go on to contaminate the chamber and specimen surface. Using Evactron Anti-Contaminator removes these deposits and restores high resolution imaging
capability in the SEM mode. This gas been demonstrated at several sites.
FEI 235 Dual Beam FIB - AMD, Sunnyvale, California
Jeol
6400: Kimberly Clark, Neenah WI.
JEOL 6400 and 845. IBM Canada, Bromont, Canada
Hitachi
S-4500 IBM San Jose, CA
User
images magnetic disk coated with a lubricant. Over time lubricant had heavily contaminated the chamber and images of defects had to be obtained on first pass. After cleaning with Evactron A-C
contamination problems disappeared. Paper presented at 1999 M&M conference: The Removal of Contamination Deposits From Defects in Thin Film Magnetic Disks By Oxidative Cleaning Inside The SEM, by Sharon Meyers and Ronald Vane. User now cleans chamber with Evactron every 2 to 4 weeks as needed. System also has EDS system and oily window problems have stopped.
Hitachi
S-4500 Applied Materials
User has
older SEM-CLEAN N2 purge system on their other SEMs. The new Evactron
system makes this unit available for use over 23 hours per day versus
on 17 hours per day for older system on the other SEMs.
Hitachi
S-4700: NIST Gaithersburg MD
Hitachi
S-4700 Oak Ridge National Laboratory, High Temperature Materials Lab.
Hitachi S-4700: University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana Ill.
User
purchased Evactron SEM-CLEAN system with automation package. The
automation package operates the Hitachi evacuation system with the
proper delays to allow for the cooling of the heated aperture before
venting chamber to Evactron operating pressure. The automatic package
then operates the plasma clean cycle for the recommended 2 minutes.
The system is ready to image specimen again 40 minutes after 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
Evactron SEM-CLEAN on a weekly maintenance cycle.
Leo
1550 and JEOL 6400: University of California Berkeley,
Microfabrication Laboratory
The
Evactron 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 chambers
pumps down through the .9 Torr to .4 torr pressure zone where
Evactron cleaning is done. Operating the Evactron adds less than one
minute to pump down time and is not notice by most users. Pump down
to high vacuum is speeded up because UV light generated by plasma is
effective at desorbing water vapor from walls during the cleaning
cycle in the roughing mode.
Results:
Cross contamination between specimens has disappeared. Higher
resolutions are being seen. UCB Physics Department orders third
Evactron A-C for new Sirion SEM in 2003 for use at LBL.
LEO
1525: NIST Boulder Colorado
Leo
1550 Intel Sacramento.
Wright
Patterson AFB, Dayton Ohio.
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