• produce milliamps of N and P type clusters
• produce beams of very high brightness
• enhance transport
• enable high tilt, high dose, low energy implants

SemEquip, Inc. is dedicated to supplying patented ion beam technology which enables the commercial use of cluster beam ion implantation in semiconductor manufacturing. We believe that cluster beams will enable traditional beamline implantation to meet the needs of the manufacturing community for the foreseeable future. ClusterIon^® Source’s strength is in performing high dose, low energy implants (such as drain extensions, poly doping, and deep source/drains) cost-effectively and with improved process control. SemEquip’s technology enables these implants to be done with high-tilt, single-wafer processing tools, since the cluster beams produced by the ClusterIon^® Source have low angular divergence, excellent uniformity, and zero energy contamination.

Figure 1. Shows measured atomic boron current versus implant energy in SemEquip’s high current beamline. The preferred cluster for P-type doping is B18H22 +, which is produced through SemEquip’s proprietary soft-ionization technique.

Since ClusterIon^® Source is compatible with both high current and medium current implantation tools, it leverages ion implantation’s core advantages, which have made it the preferred doping technology for performing transistor well engineering.

Figure 2. Illustrates the throughput advantage achieved by ClusterBoron™ Implant Material implantation in a drift-mode implanter over the industry’s best-in-class high current decel platform for a 1E15 drain extension implant. At 500 eV, the throughput is four times higher, without the energy contamination that accompanies deceleration.

The ClusterIon^® Source produces a very small beam emittance, as much as an order of magnitude smaller than conventional ion sources. This allows substantial low energy beam currents to be delivered even in serial, medium current implanter tools which require a small beam divergence. This feature of SemEquip’s technology enables the use of the medium current tool to perform high dose, low energy implants at high tilt angles, a requirement that is rapidly becoming the industries’ preferred process for sub-90nm devices.

N and P-type Clusters
The ClusterIon^® Source delivers about 1 mA of the following ion species to the substrate of our high current implanter: B₁₈H₂₂ ⁺, B₁₀H₁₄⁺, As₄ ⁺, P₄ ⁺, and BF₂⁺. In addition, ClusterIon^® Source produces about 0.5 mA of these negative ions: B₁₈H₂₂ ^-, and B₁₀H₁₄