材料英语证书考试(PEC)-材料应用术语.doc

材料英语证书考试(PEC)-材料应用术语

200mm
· A size of silicon wafer approximately 8 inches in diameter. Also used to refer to a tool designed to process wafers of this size.
300mm
· A size of silicon wafer approximately 12 inches in diameter. Also used to refer to a tool designed to process wafers of this size.

A
ABATEMENT
· A process where toxic or other hazardous substances are removed from a liquid or gas. Examples include removing copper particles from CMP slurry or converting liquid or gaseous toxic effluents into safe forms for disposal.
ACCUMULATOR
· A storage unit used to temporarily store work-in-progress in a manufacturing line.
ACTIVE MATRIX OLED DISPLAY (AMOLED)
· A type of display that uses an array of electroluminescent OLED pixels controlled by thin-film transistors.
· Each pixel of an AMOLED display produces light directly, unlike a TFT-LCD where the entire display is illuminated from behind by a backlight and selectively allowed through by thin-film transistors controlling the polarization of the liquid crystal at each pixel.
· The key benefit of AMOLED displays compared to TFT-LCDs is that because "off" pixels consume no power, the overall power consumption is significantly lower.

ADVANCED BINARY MASK
· A type of binary photomask that uses an opaque MoSi layer as the light-absorbing layer. An extremely thin Cr layer is placed on top and used as a hard mask for the etch process. Also called an opaque MoSi on glass (OMOG) photomask.
ADVANCED PROCESS CONTROL (APC)
· A broad term referring to process control tools used for solving multivariable control problems or discrete control problem. These tools include statistical process control, run-to-run control and fault detection and classification.
ALD (ATOMIC LAYER DEPOSITION)
· A thin film deposition technique where material is deposited a fraction of a monolayer of material at a time.
ALPS (Advanced Low-Pressure Source)
· A PVD process performed at low pressure and large target-to-wafer distance to create a directional flux of deposited species.
ALTERNATING APERTURE PHASE SHIFT MASK (AAPSM or alt-APSM)
· A type of PSM that has regions of the quartz substrate etched to different depths so as to introduce a 180 degree phase shift in the transmitted light to improve the contrast and thus the resolution of the projected image on the wafer.
ALUMINIUM INTERCONNECT
· Aluminum pathways within a microchip that make connections between the transistors and other circuit elements.
AMORPHOUS SILICON
· A type of silicon deposited without a crystal structure. In PV, amorphous silicon is an important thin filmtechnology.
ANGSTROM (Å)
· A unit of length; one ten-billionth of a meter.
ANNEAL
· A high-temperature processing step designed to repair defects in the crystal structure of the wafer or induce phase transformations.
APC (AUTOMATED PROCESS CONTROL)
· see advanced process control.
APF (ADVANCED PATTERNING FILMS)
· A family of strippable amorphous carbon films used as a hardmask for advanced lithography and etchpatterning.
ARC (ANTI-REFLECTIVE COATING)
· A light-absorbing layer (typically titanium nitride), deposited on top of metal or polysilicon, to improvelithography performance.
ASPECT RATIO
· The ratio of depth to width of a circuit feature such as a via or contact.
ATTENUATED PHASE SHIFT MASK (APSM)
· A type of PSM that allows a small amount of light to be transmitted through certain regions to interfere with the light coming from transparent parts of the mask, with the goal again of improving the contrast on the wafer.
AUTOCLAVE
· In PV module manufacturing, an autoclave is used to remove trapped air and improve adhesion between laminating film and glass substrates by subjecting the module to elevated temperature and pressure.
AUTOMATIC DEFECT CLASSIFICATION (ADC)
· A technique employed by wafer inspection systems whereby defects are placed into several categories based on their physical and optical properties.

B
BACK CONTACT
· A metallic layer that covers the entire back surface of a solar PV cell and acts as a conductor.
· Also used to refer to advanced cell designs such as EWT where both terminals of the cell are located on the back side of the wafer, thus increasing the light-gathering area of the cell and hence improving conversion efficiency.
BACK GLASS
· The bottom layer of a thin film solar module, which provides rigidity and electrical insulation. Current is extracted from the module through the junction box that is attached to the circuit through a hole in the back glass.
BALANCE OF SYSTEM (BOS)
· The components in addition to solar modules necessary to make a functioning solar PV generating system, including a mounting structure, cabling, inverters, land and maintenance.
BARRIER
· A physical layer designed to prevent intermixing of the layers above and below the barrier layer.
BEOL (BACK-END OF LINE)
· The series of process steps after transistor fabrication through completion of the wafer, prior to electrical test. Also known as the back-end of semiconductor manufacturing. The term back end is also used to refer to those parts of chip manufacturing after the wafer is complete, i.e. dicing, packaging and test.
BINARY MASK
· A photomask covered with a pattern defined with a light-absorbing film, typically of chromium. Optically, this is the simplest type of photomask, lacking the phase-shifting features of PSM and ASPM types. See also Advanced Binary Mask.
BOTTOM COVERAGE
· A parameter used in deposition to describe the ability of a process to deposit material in the bottom of circuit features compared to the top surface of the wafer, or field. It is defined as the ratio of the film thickness on the field divided by the film thickness at the bottom of a given feature.
BPSG (BOROPHOSPHOSILICATE GLASS)
· An amorphous insulating material made by doping SiO2 with boron and phosphorus to improve moisture resistance and reflow characteristics.
BRIGHTFIELD INSPECTION
· A defect inspection technique that collects light reflected from a defect, creating an image in which a defect appears dark against a white background. Generally speaking, brightfield systems are more sensitive, but slower than darkfield inspection. Brightfield inspection is typically used to find patterning defects during transistor fabrication.
BUSS LINE
· In a thin film PV module, relatively large conductive ribbons that collect power from individual solar cells.

C
CD-SEM (CRITICAL DIMENSION SCANNING ELECTRON MICROSCOPE)
· A type of scanning electron microscope used to measure critical dimensions.
Cd-Te
· A category of thin-film solar cells that uses a cadmium-tellurium compound as the light-converting active layer.
CDU (CRITICAL DIMENSION UNIFORMITY)
· a parameter used in etch to describe precision of the etch process. CDU is defined as the variation of the size of a repeating feature from its nominal value (CD) measured at several points across the substrate.
CHIP
· A complete integrated circuit, named after the small piece of silicon upon which the circuit has been fabricated.
CIS (CIGS)
· Copper Indium Diselenide: a type of thin film solar cell material that uses a compound of copper, indium, selenium. A fourth element, gallium, may also be added to the compound (CIGS) to achieve higherefficiency.
CLEANROOM
· An area in a fab where the air is conditioned to remove airborne particles that could prevent the correct function of semiconductor devices.
CMOS (COMPLIMENTARY METAL OXIDE SEMICONDUCTOR)
· A MOS device consisting of paired p-channel and n-channel transistors.
· Also used to refer to the family of manufacturing processes used to construct integrated circuits that feature CMOS transistors.
CMP (CHEMICAL MECHANICAL PLANARIZATION)
· A process that uses an abrasive, chemically active slurry to physically abrade the microscopic topographic features on a partly processed wafer so that subsequent processes can begin from a flat surface. Also referred to as chemical mechanical polishing.
COLOR FILTER
· A layer of an LCD flat panel display that is divided into transparent areas of red, green and blue, each of which overlays a transistor which is switched on an off to the full range of colors.
COMPUTER INTEGRATED MANUFACTURING (CIM)
· A manufacturing approach using computers to control the entire production process, allowing individual steps to exchange information and initiate actions.
CONDUCTOR
· A material that contains mobile charge carriers, such as electrons or ions.
CONTACT
· A feature on a chip that forms the electrical pathway between the first interconnect layer and the transistor. This area is often filled with tungsten.
CONTINUOUS WAVE
· In RF plasma generation, refers to a waveform that is maintains a constant frequency and amplitude, as opposed to "pulsed" delivery where the supply is modulated, typically between two different amplitudes, at a frequency in the 100-1000Hz range.
COPPER INTERCONNECT
· An interconnect structure using copper as the conducting material, providing improved device speed and lower power consumption compared with aluminum interconnects.
COPPER SEED LAYER
· A thin copper layer, usually deposited by physical vapor deposition, which acts as a wetting and nucleation layer for successful subsequent copper bulk film deposition by electrochemical plating.
CPD (CONFORMAL PLASMA DOPING)
· A doping process that deposits a conformal layer of material containing the desired dopant species and then uses a thermal process to drive the dopants to a controlled depth in the underlying circuit structures. CPD provides a means to dope complex, 3D structures. Doping is traditionally performed byion implantation, which bombards the wafer with dopant ions moving at high speed. However, this line-of-sight bombardment process cannot provide uniform doping of 3D structures. More importantly, the fast-moving ions can damage the ultra-thin semiconductor layers in cutting-edge chips. CPD is designed to solve both problems.
CRITICAL DIMENSION (CD)
· In photolithography, CD is the minimum features size that is to be patterned on the wafer. In other semiconductor processes, CD is the size of a feature found at several points across the substrate used to describe the accuracy or other characteristic of a given process.
CROSSTALK
· An undesirable effect whereby a signal in a circuit element, such as an interconnect line, affects the signal in another nearby circuit. In semiconductors, the coupling is usually a result of parasitic capacitance between the two circuits.
CRYSTALLINE
· A material that has atoms arranged in an ordered periodic array.
CRYSTALLINE SILICON (c-Si)
· A generic term for solar cell technology that uses a substrate of purified silicon in a crystalline structure.
CVD (CHEMICAL VAPOR DEPOSITION)
· A process for depositing thin films by exposing the substrate to one or more volatile precursors, which react and/or decompose on the substrate surface.

D
DAMASCENE
· A means of creating copper metal interconnects by over-filling trenches in the interlayer dielectric usingECD then using CMP to remove the excess copper.
DARC (DIELECTRIC ANTI-REFLECTIVE COATING)
· A non-reflective, non-energy-absorbing, inorganic dielectric layer deposited on top of metal or polysilicon to improve lithography performance.
DARKFIELD INSPECTION
· A defect inspection technique that uses detectors that collect scattered light to make a defect appear bright against a dark background. Typically used to find particles on wafers during interconnectfabrication. Compare with brightfield inspection.
DEEP ULTRAVIOLET (DUV)
· The portion of the ultraviolet light spectrum with wavelengths below 300nm.
DEFECT INSPECTION
· A process where defects are located on a patterned wafer. A list of defect locations is created and passed to a DR-SEM for review and classification.
DEFECT REVIEW SCANNING ELECTRON MICROSCOPE (DR-SEM)
· A type of scanning electron microscope used to classify defect types during the wafer manufacturing process and determine whether these defects will affect chip yields.
DEPOSITION
· A process used to deposit a thin layer of insulating or conductive material onto the substrate.
DESIGN RULES
· Rules that outline geometry and connectivity restrictions for the design and layout of integrated circuits.
DIE
· In semiconductor manufacturing, the area of the silicon wafer on which a functional circuit is fabricated. Many hundreds of identical dies (alternative plurals are die and dice) are fabricated on each wafer.
DIELECTRIC
· An insulator
· Also used more specifically to refer to an insulator that may be polarized by an applied electric field. Two dielectrics commonly used in semiconductor processing are silicon dioxide (SiO2) and silicon nitride (Si3N4).
DOPANT
· An impurity added in controlled amounts to a material in order to modify some intrinsic characteristic, such as resistivity or melting point. The addition of a dopant to a semiconductor creates a material with predominantly negative (n type) or positive (p type) charge carriers depending on the dopant species.
DOPANT PASTE
· A viscous liquid or suspension containing dopant material.
DOPING
· The process of adding dopants to a material.
DOUBLE PATTERNING
· A class of patterning techniques designed to increase the density of circuit features that can be produced on the wafer beyond what the normal limits of a particular lithography stepper. See pitch-halving andSADP.
DOUBLE PRINT
· A technique used in solar PV manufacturing where contact lines or other structures are built up in multiple, precisely-aligned screen printing operations.
· Example applications of double print include the fabrication of narrower, taller contact lines and selective emitter cell types.
DPN (DECOUPLED PLASMA NITRIDATION)
· a method that uses inductive coupling to generate nitrogen plasma and incorporate nitrogen into the top surface layer of an ultra-thin gate oxide to increase the dielectric constant of the gate dielectric.
DPS (DECOUPLED PLASMA SOURCE)
· A type of ICP plasma source used primarily for etch applications that separates the management of plasma density and ion energy, resulting in high etch rate and minimal plasma damage to the substrate.
DRAIN
· The output terminal of a FET.
DRAM (DYNAMIC RANDOM ACCESS MEMORY)
· A type of volatile computer memory where each bit is stored in a separate capacitor. Because capacitors self-discharge over time, the state of each bit must be refreshed approximately 15 times per second, hence the term "dynamic". Compare with "static" flash memory.
· DRAM offers the fastest programming of any type of memory, making it highly suitable for direct connection to a microprocessor for use as main memory.
DUAL DAMASCENE
· A Damascene process designed to form and fill two features with copper at once, e.g., a trench overlying a via may both be filled with a single copper d