A new cleaning process combining non-ionic surfactant with diamond film electrochemical oxidation for polished silicon wafers

This paper presents a new cleaning process for particle and organic contaminants on polished silicon wafer surfaces. It combines a non-ionic surfactant with boron-doped diamond (BDD) film anode electrochemical oxidation. The non-ionic surfactant is used to remove particles on the polished wafer's surface, because it can form a protective film on the surface, which makes particles easy to remove. The effects of particle removal comparative experiments were observed by metaliographic microscopy, which showed that the 1% v/v non-ionic surfactant achieved the best result. However, the surfactant film itself belongs to organic contamination, and it eventually needs to be removed. BDD film anode electrochemical oxidation (BDD-EO) is used to remove organic contaminants, because it can efficiently degrade organic matter. Three organic contaminant removal comparative experiments were carried out: the first one used the non-ionic surfactant in the first step and then used BDD-EO, the second one used BDD-EO only, and the last one used RCA cleaning technique. The XPS measurement result shows that the wafer's surface cleaned by BDD-EO has much less organic residue than that cleaned by RCA cleaning technique, and the non-ionic surfactant can be efficiently removed by BDD-EO.