Standard Operating Procedure
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Prepare for your process Upon arriving, you should find the system running idle, having completed the IdleSystem recipe after the previous user finished. If you do not find the system in this state, please verify previous user has completed their work. It is recommended that you now execute the idle system before processing your sample. That recipe takes about 10 minutes to run and will clean up the chamber in preparation for your growth. Assuming the idle system recipe has been completed before your arrival, and the system is ready for your use, please verify the gas flows below and then log the main chamber pressure in the spreadsheet located on the desktop called "Fiji F200 Log Sheet...". a. Channel 0 – Argon Carrier(sccm): 20 b. Channel 1 – Argon Plasma(sccm): 40 c. Channel 2 – N2 Plasma(sccm): 0 d. Channel 3 – O2 Plasma(sccm): 0 e. Channel 4 – H2 Plasma(sccm): 0 f. Door Purge: Green light on
Complete the log entry with your PU alias, date of growth, sample description, chamber temperatures, material, and # of cycles. | Image Modified |
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Loading Your Sample
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Vent the System to Load Your Sample Press the Vent button on the left side of the control panel. Wait for the system to vent to atmosphere, this will take 10 to 15 minutes. If you see that you are not near complete vent after this time, you can try pressing the pump button, followed by the Vent button again. The pressure gauge in this system is not accurate at atmospheric pressures. You can clearly identify full vent when the pressure plot levels off. To help increase the speed of venting, you can turn up the carrier gas flows to the maximum flow rate. Mass flow controllers 0 and 1. |
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Loading Your Sample
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Vent the System to Load Your Sample
Press the Vent button on the left side of the control panel. Wait for the system to vent to atmosphere, this will take 10 to 15 minutes. If you see that you are not near complete vent after this time, you can try pressing the pump button, followed by the Vent button again.
The pressure gauge in this system is not accurate at atmospheric pressures. You can clearly identify full vent when the pressure plot levels off.
To help increase the speed of venting, you can turn up the carrier gas flows to the maximum flow rate. Mass flow controllers 0 and 1.
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There is nothing holding the door closed except for the pressure difference between the atmosphere and the chamber vacuum. Do not attempt to force the chamber door open. When the system is vented, the door will open freely. The knob that you see does not operate a latching mechanism, there is no latching mechanism on this door. |
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Load Your Sample | Load Your Sample | Load Your Sample Warning |
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The materials being removed from the chamber are HOT! Risk of burns! Avoid making direct contact with the sample carrier or any materials present on the sample carrier. |
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Do not touch or place anything on the hot sample carriere that is not thermally stable. Transfer of materials onto the sample carrier will contaminate the carrier and the chamber if placing inside. ONLY use metal tweezers to place and remove your samples from the sample carrier! |
Open the door to the process chamber, it should open freely. Looking inside you will find two metal hooks facing downward. On the wall next to you, you should find the sample carrier handling tool. Grab the carrier handling tool by the black handle with your right hand, and the shaft with your left hand. Do not touch any of the chamber parts, they are hot, and you can contaminate the surfaces. Place the arc end under the metal hooks of the sample carrier and pull the carrier from the chamber. Make sure both hooks are fully engaged and be careful not to allow the carrier to fall off the hooks while transfering to the work table.
You can place your samples directly onto the center of the chuck, no carriers or mounting is required. Only use metal tweezers as plastic tips will melt onto the hot sample carrier.
Place the sample carrier back into the process chamber. Insert the carrier until it full seats against the outer chamber wall. Allow the tool to drop off the hooks, use the tool to press the carrier to ensure it is fully seated against the chamber wall.
Close the chamber door and press the PUMP button. You will hear a low pitch grinding sound that is normal, this is the pump removing the initial atmospheric load from the chamber. If that noise continues for more that a second or two, or is very loud, the chamber door may not be fully closed. Please inspect and try again.
Image RemovedImage Removed | Recipe Selection and Setup
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There are many predefined user recipes preloaded on the system. You will need to select from these recipes and cannot create custom recipes from scratch. The provided recipes should allow you to perform any acceptable growths with minimal inputs from the user. If you desire to do something unique please contact lab staff for more information. |
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Load the Default Recipe for Your Selected Film
Right click on the Recipe table, in any of the cells, and the Load Recipe option will appear. After clicking, and traditional file browser will open for recipe selection. Navigate to the appropriate location and select the recipe you intend to use.
See Available Standard Recipes section for more information regarding locations and recipes.
Image Removed | Set the Desired Film Thickness
After your selected recipe loads into the recipe table, you will see the recipe name at the top. Scroll down the table until you find two lines highlighted in the same color, in this example they are highlighted yellow. These two lines identify a looping command, typically the ALD cycle. The number in the # column, is the line number where the recipe will go when the goto command is executed, in this example line 24.
Find the line who's instruction is "goto", and set the Value column for desired film thickness. The number shown in the Value column is the number of loops to be completed. This number directly defines the thickness of film that will be grown. Each loop will grow 1 angstrom of film. In the example shown to the right, 100 loops=100 angstroms=10 nm of aluminum oxide film will result from this recipe.
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There is an 50 nm (500 cycles/loops) administrative limit on the film thickness allowed in one growth. If you need to grow films thicker than this, you will need special permission from the engineer and Professor Zhihong Chen. |
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Starting the Recipe and Recipe Status
Once you have loaded your desired recipe, and modified the goto command to set your desired film thickness, the tool is ready to Run the recipe. Make sure you have loaded your sample and pumped the system down using the PUMP button.
Press the START button on the left panel, followed by YES on the pop up window. If the system interlocks were all met, then the recipe will start to execute from line 0 in the recipe table, and progress down the table one line at a time. If the recipe does not start to execute after pressing the START button, check the status bar for error Note |
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There is nothing holding the door closed except for the pressure difference between the atmosphere and the chamber vacuum. Do not attempt to force the chamber door open. When the system is vented, the door will open freely. The knob that you see does not operate a latching mechanism, there is no latching mechanism on this door. |
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| Load Your Sample |
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| Load Your Sample |
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| Load Your Sample
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The materials being removed from the chamber are HOT! Risk of burns! Avoid making direct contact with the sample carrier or any materials present on the sample carrier. |
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Do not touch or place anything on the hot sample carriere that is not thermally stable. Transfer of materials onto the sample carrier will contaminate the carrier and the chamber if placing inside. ONLY use metal tweezers to place and remove your samples from the sample carrier! |
Open the door to the process chamber, it should open freely. Looking inside you will find two metal hooks facing downward. On the wall next to you, you should find the sample carrier handling tool. Grab the carrier handling tool by the black handle with your right hand, and the shaft with your left hand. Do not touch any of the chamber parts, they are hot, and you can contaminate the surfaces. Place the arc end under the metal hooks of the sample carrier and pull the carrier from the chamber. Make sure both hooks are fully engaged and be careful not to allow the carrier to fall off the hooks while transfering to the work table. You can place your samples directly onto the center of the chuck, no carriers or mounting is required. Only use metal tweezers as plastic tips will melt onto the hot sample carrier. Place the sample carrier back into the process chamber. Insert the carrier until it full seats against the outer chamber wall. Allow the tool to drop off the hooks, use the tool to press the carrier to ensure it is fully seated against the chamber wall. Close the chamber door and press the PUMP button. You will hear a low pitch grinding sound that is normal, this is the pump removing the initial atmospheric load from the chamber. If that noise continues for more that a second or two, or is very loud, the chamber door may not be fully closed. Please inspect and try again. | Image AddedImage Added |
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Recipe Selection and Setup
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Load the Default Recipe for Your Selected Film Right click on the Recipe table, in any of the cells, and the Load Recipe option will appear. After clicking, and traditional file browser will open for recipe selection. Navigate to the appropriate location and select the recipe you intend to use. See 6231020 section for more information regarding locations and recipes.
| Image Added | Set the Desired Film Thickness After your selected recipe loads into the recipe table, you will see the recipe name at the top. Scroll down the table until you find two lines highlighted in the same color, in this example they are highlighted yellow. These two lines identify a looping command, typically the ALD cycle. The number in the # column, is the line number where the recipe will go when the goto command is executed, in this example line 24. Find the line who's instruction is "goto", and set the Value column for desired film thickness. The number shown in the Value column is the number of loops to be completed. This number directly defines the thickness of film that will be grown. Each loop will grow 1 angstrom of film. In the example shown to the right, 100 loops=100 angstroms=10 nm of aluminum oxide film will result from this recipe. Note |
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There is an 30 nm (300 cycles/loops) administrative limit on the film thickness allowed in one growth. If you need to grow films thicker than this, you will need special permission from the engineer and Professor Zhihong Chen. |
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There are many predefined user recipes preloaded on the system. You will need to select from these recipes and cannot create custom recipes from scratch. The provided recipes should allow you to perform any acceptable growths with minimal inputs from the user. If you desire to do something unique please contact lab staff for more information. |
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Running the Recipe
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Starting the Recipe and Recipe Status Once you have loaded your desired recipe, and modified the goto command to set your desired film thickness, the tool is ready to Run the recipe. Make sure you have loaded your sample and pumped the system down using the PUMP button. Press the START button on the left panel, followed by YES on the pop up window. If the system interlocks were all met, then the recipe will start to execute from line 0 in the recipe table, and progress down the table one line at a time. If the recipe does not start to execute after pressing the START button, check the status bar for error message and correct as necessary, then press START again. The status bar displays the current status of the tool. When recipes are running, it will display "Running...." followed by the line number of the recipe table that is being executed and any messages related to that command. When the recipe is finished, the status bar will display "Run has completed" | Image Modified | Verifying Recipe Execution During the recipe execution, the pressure plot will display the pressure changes in real time. You will see many various pressure changes as the tool changes carrier gas flows and pulses precursors. In order to make sure the recipe is executing and delivering precursor to the chamber as expected, we watch the pressure plot for sharp peaks as shown to the right. These peaks are the precursor pulses being introduced to the process chamber and indicate a good flow of material. Notice there are two different peak heights shown to the right. Remember that we are looping through two pulses of material, one is water and one is Trimethylaluminum (TMA) in this example. This means that every other pulse is the same material, water or TMA. We want to make sure that each material produces consistent peak heights when compared with itself, meaning every other peak should be roughly the same. In the example to the right, the peaks aligned with the green line are water, and the peaks aligned with the red line are TMA. Notice the peaks are not exactly the same even within one material. This is normal, they just need to be close to indicate a good growth run. If one or both peaks tapers off significantly or to zero, that would indicate a problem, loss of material (empty bottle most likely). See How do I know if my growth proceeded as expected? FAQ for more information regarding reviewing pressure traces post run. | Image Modified |
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Removing Your Sample
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Instructions | Images |
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Warning |
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The materials being removed from the chamber are HOT! Risk of burns! Avoid making direct contact with the sample carrier or any materials present on the sample carrier. |
Note |
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Do not touch or place anything on the hot sample |
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carriere carrier that is not thermally stable. Transfer of materials onto the sample carrier will contaminate the carrier and the chamber if placing inside. ONLY use metal tweezers to place and remove your samples from the sample carrier! |
For detailed instructions see the |
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Load Your Sample 6231020 section to remove your samples. Once the recipe has been completed, and the status bar says "Recipe has completed," vent the chamber, open chamber door, and remove the sample carrier placing it on the worktable. Remove your samples using the metal tweezers, and place the empty sample carrier back inside the chamber. Close the chamber door and press the PUMP button to place the system under vacuum. | Image Modified |
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Leaving the Work Area
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Place the System in Idle or Standby Load the IdleSystem recipe and press the START button. Once that recipe starts, you can leave the system unattended, it will run autonomously and leave the system in the appropriate state for idling or standby. Info |
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It is important to run the IdleSystem recipe after your growth. This recipe uses oxygen plasma to clean the chamber and leaves the gas flows in a suitable condition for idling or standby. These conditions are important as they prevent undesired oxide deposits on the chamber walls. |
| Image Modified | Clean up the Surroundings and Work Table Throw away trash, remove any of your belongings, and place tools back in their appropriate locations. The work table surface should be clear of any objects, use the right half of the shelf above for storage of supplies and nitrogen gun. Return the sample carrier to the clip located on the wall next to the Fiji chamber door. Please be sure you have made the log book entry before leaving! | Image Modified |
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