Laser Cleaning of Silicon Wafers: Mechanisms and Efficiencies

We report on experiments on the underlying physical mechanisms in the Dry(DLC) and Steam Laser Cleaning (SLC) process. Using a frequency doubled, Q-switched Nd:YAG laser (FWHM=8 ns) we removed polystyrene (PS) particles with diameters from 110-2000 nm from industrial silicon wafers by the DLC process. The experiments have been carried out both in ambient conditions as well as in high vacuum (10 mbar) and the cleaned areas have been characterized by atomic force microscopy for damage inspection. Besides the determining the cleaning thresholds in laser fluence for a large interval of particle sizes we could show that particle removal in DLC is due to a combination of at least three effects: thermal substrate expansion, local substrate ablation due to field enhancement at the particle and explosive evaporation of adsorbed humidity from the air. Which effect dominates the process is subject to the boundary conditions. For our laser parameters no damage free DLC was possible, i.e. whenever a particle was removed by DLC we damaged the substrate by local field enhancement. In our SLC experiments we determined the amount of superheating of a liquid layer adjacent to surfaces with controlled roughness that is necessary for bubble nucleation. On smooth surfaces high superheatings were necessary, in good agreement with theoretical predictions. Rough surfaces exhibited only a much smaller superheating.