The function and principle of curing furnace

First, the role of curing furnace

Curing furnace is an important equipment in semiconductor manufacturing process, which is mainly used for curing photoresist. In the semiconductor manufacturing process, the main use of photoresist is as a photolithographic layer to define the pattern of semiconductor devices. The photoresist is coated on the wafer surface and cured after treatment such as platinum heating to form a template with the desired pattern shape. In the subsequent semiconductor device manufacturing process, the semiconductor device with circuit function is finally formed by completing the etching and ion implantation steps on the lithographic layer.

The main function of the curing furnace is to cure the photoresist coated on the wafer surface, so that the photoresist molecules have a cross-linking reaction, so that it is not easy to occur thermal deformation or swelling damage in the subsequent process.

Second, the principle of curing furnace

The principle of the curing furnace is to use high temperature to quickly cross-link the chemical bonds between the molecules of the photoresist (usually methyl isopropyl ketone resin) to form a network structure, so that it forms a solid state. When the photoresist is coated on a silicon wafer, it is exposed to ultraviolet light. At this time, the unexposed area is protected and does not change its chemical properties; The exposed area will undergo a chemical reaction that is significantly worse than the unexposed area and will be removed. Then, in the curing furnace, through rapid heating treatment, the chemical bonds in the photoresist are cross-linked to form a network structure, so that it can be cured. The cured photoresist forms a surface layer of uniform thickness and high flatness, which can be used as the laser speed in the semiconductor manufacturing process.