A chemical-mechanical planarization (CMP) system includes a platen, a pad, a polish head, a rotating mechanism, a light source, and a detector. The pad is disposed on the platen. The polish head is configured to hold a wafer against the pad. The rotating mechanism is configured to rotate at least one of the platen and the polish head. The light source is configured to provide incident light to an end-point layer on the wafer. The detector is configured to detect absorption of the incident light by the end-point layer.

A chemical liquid preparation method of preparing a chemical liquid for treating a film formed on a substrate, including a gas dissolving process in which an oxygen-containing gas and an inert-gas-containing gas are dissolved in the chemical liquid by supplying the oxygen-containing gas which contains oxygen gas and the inert-gas-containing gas which contains an inert gas to a chemical liquid, wherein in the gas dissolving process, a dissolved oxygen concentration in the chemical liquid is adjusted by setting a mixing ratio between the oxygen-containing gas and the inert-gas-containing gas supplied to the chemical liquid as a mixing ratio corresponding to a predetermined target dissolved oxygen concentration.

A method for analyzing a semiconductor device includes repeatedly etching an entire surface of a wafer at a same etch rate by a target depth to expose a next surface of the wafer. The method includes obtaining two-dimensional structure information from each repeatedly etched surface of the wafer and serially stacking the repeatedly obtained two-dimensional structure information to generate a three-dimensional image.

Semiconductor devices and their manufacturing methods are disclosed herein, and more particularly to semiconductor devices including a transistor having gate all around (GAA) transistor structures and manufacturing methods thereof. Different thickness in an epi-growth scheme is adopted to create different sheet thicknesses within the same device channel regions for use in manufacturing vertically stacked nano structure (e.g., nanosheet, nanowire, or the like) GAA devices. A GAA device may be formed with a vertical stack of nanostructures in a channel region with a topmost nanostructure of the vertical stack being thicker than the other nanostructures of the vertical stack. Furthermore, an LDD portion of the topmost nano structure may be formed as the thickest of the nanostructures in the vertical stack.

A substrate processing system includes: a modification layer forming device configured to form a modification layer within a first substrate along a boundary between a peripheral portion to be removed and a central portion of the first substrate; an interface processing device configured to process an interface where the first substrate and a second substrate are bonded in the peripheral portion; a periphery removing device configured to remove the peripheral portion starting from the modification layer; a position detection device configured to detect a position of the modification layer or a position of the interface; and a control device configured to control the modification layer forming device and the interface processing device. The control device controls the position of the interface based on the detected position of the modification layer, or controls the position of the modification layer based on the detected position of the interface.

A processing system and platform for improving both the microscopic and macroscopic uniformity of materials during etching is disclosed herein. These improvements may be accomplished through the formation and dissolution of thin, self-limiting layers on the material surface by the use of wet atomic layer etching (ALE) techniques. For etching of polycrystalline materials, these self-limiting reactions can be used to prevent this roughening of the surface during etching. Thus, as disclosed herein, a wet ALE process uses sequential, self-limiting reactions to first modify the surface layer of a material and then selectively remove the modified layer.

A method and apparatus for applying an electric field and/or a magnetic field to a photoresist layer without air gap intervention during photolithography processes is provided herein. The method and apparatus include an immersion bake head, which includes an electrode and is configured to be alternated between a hot pedestal and a cold pedestal. The immersion bake head serves as a substrate carrier and applies an electric field to the substrate. The immersion bake head additionally serves to provide and remove process fluid from the substrate using a plurality of fluid conduits.

A method and apparatus for applying an electric field and/or a magnetic field to a photoresist layer without air gap intervention during photolithography processes is provided herein. The method and apparatus include a transfer device and a plurality of modules. The transfer device is configured to rotate a plurality of substrates between each of the modules, wherein one module includes a heating pedestal and another module includes a cooling pedestal. One module is utilized for inserting and removing the substrates from the system. At least the heating module is able to be sealed and filled with a process volume before applying the electric field.

A method of controlling a substrate etching process includes disposing a bottom surface or a top surface of a substrate adjacent to volume of etching fluid to produce an etchant-substrate interface and heating the etchant-substrate interface via spatially controlled electromagnetic radiation. The method also includes transmitting a monitoring beam through the substrate, the substrate and volume of etching fluid being at least partially transparent at the wavelength range of the monitoring beam and measuring a property of the substrate surface during the substrate etching process via the monitoring beam to produce a real-time measured property for the substrate. A corresponding etching system and computer-program product is also disclosed herein.

A method of controlling oxygen vacancy concentration in a semiconducting metal oxide includes exposing a treated surface of a crystalline metal oxide to water at a temperature and pressure sufficient to maintain the water in a liquid phase. During the exposure, a portion of the water is adsorbed onto the treated surface and dissociates into atomic oxygen and hydrogen. The atomic oxygen is injected into and diffuses through the crystalline metal oxide, forming isolated oxygen interstitials and oxygen defect complexes. The isolated oxygen interstitials replace oxygen vacancies in the crystalline metal oxide.