Alumina ceramic plates show great potential in the semiconductor field
A globally renowned semiconductor manufacturing enterprise faces severe challenges in the etching process during the manufacturing of its high-end chips. Under the long-term effect of plasma, the traditional etching chamber materials frequently encounter corrosion problems, resulting in low production efficiency and a high defective product rate. To solve this difficult problem, after a large number of experiments and studies, the enterprise decided to use high-purity alumina ceramic plates as the protective materials for the etching chamber and the internal components of the chamber.
High-purity alumina ceramic plates have the characteristic of extremely high purity. Generally, the purity requirement is above 99%, and the metal oxide impurities (such as MgO, CaO, SiO₂, etc.) are strictly controlled within the range of 0.05 - 0.8%. This high purity endows the alumina ceramic plates with extremely excellent plasma etching resistance. Compared with the aluminum alloy materials used in the early stage and the solution of plating an anodized aluminum oxide layer on the aluminum alloy, the dense high-purity alumina ceramic plates effectively avoid the problem of metal particle contamination. At the same time, there is no situation of easy cracking due to different thermal expansion coefficients between it and the substrate, which greatly improves the etching resistance of the etching chamber.