Abstract: A method and apparatus for measuring gas flow are provided. In one embodiment, a calibration circuit for gas control may be utilized to verify and/or calibrate gas flows utilized for backside cooling, process gas delivery, purge gas delivery, cleaning agent delivery, carrier gases delivery and remediation gas delivery, among others.

Abstract: The amount of atoms diffused into a substrate may be made uniform or the thickness of a thin film may be made uniform in a low species utilization process by stopping the flow of gas into a reaction chamber during the low species utilization process. Stopping the flow of gas into a reaction chamber may entail closing the gate valve (the valve to the vacuum pump), stabilizing the pressure within the reaction chamber, and maintaining the stabilized pressure while stopping the gas flowing into the chamber. Low species utilization processes include the diffusion of nitrogen into silicon dioxide gate dielectric layers by decoupled plasma nitridation (DPN), the deposition of a silicon dioxide film by rapid thermal processing (RTP) or chemical vapor deposition (CVD), and the deposition of silicon epitaxial layers by CVD.

Abstract: The temperatures of scavenger-emitting kit parts in a high-density plasma (HDP) etching system are elevated to or close to respective steady state equilibrium temperatures so that scavenger chemistry and rates remain substantially the same on a wafer-to-wafer basis. A relatively inert warm-up plasma is turned on within the HDP chamber during idle time periods that precede or occur between executions of a predefined plasma-processing recipe so as to raise the temperatures of chamber-internal kit parts.