To address the water mark issue from hydrophobic film drying, and the stringent particle removal requirements for the 45nm technology node and beyond, we developed a cleaner with an innovative single wafer Marangoni dryer. The single wafer Marangoni dryer design features and process characterization data are presented in this paper. The major results can be summarized as: (1) With the immersion type Marangoni dryer, as the wafer is lifted out of a DIW bath, a stable and uniform meniscus can be easily maintained, making the single-wafer Marangoni dryer ideal for drying hydrophilic, hydrophobic or hydrophobic/hydrophilic mixed patterned wafers; (2) The new Marangoni dryer leaves ~14nm [1] water film on the wafer after drying, therefore any dissolved or suspended materials contained inside the water film, and potentially left on the wafer surface after water evaporation, is less than 14nm in diameter. This feature is critical for the 45nm technology node and beyond because 23nm particle could be killer defects at these nodes [2]; (3) Because of the strong Marangoni flow effect, high aspect ratio features can be completely dried without leaving any water droplets inside the trenches; therefore copper corrosion can be prevented; (4) The Marangoni dryer uses N2 as the carrier gas, so when a wafer is lifted out of the degasified DIW bath through the N2/IPA spray zone, it is thoroughly dried in an oxygen-free environment before exposure to the ambient environment; (5) The Marangoni dryer is free of electrostatic charge and centrifugal force because of the slow (2mm/s~20mm/s) wafer linear lifting speed compared to linear speed at wafer edge during SRD.
