2014 Volume 57 Issue 7 Pages 272-276
An electrostatic chuck (ESC) wafer stage with a built-in thin type acoustic emission (AE) sensor has been developed for in situ detection of micro-arc discharges occurring around a wafer during plasma processing. The thin AE sensor, which is made of aluminum nitride piezoelectric films, has a detector that is less than 1 mm thick, and it can be installed in a modified ESC wafer stage. The results of this study demonstrate that the sensor can detect acoustic waves propagating through the wafer stage that are generated by micro-arc discharges around the wafer. This in situ detection method is expected to help improve production yield in semiconductor manufacturing.
