Patent ID: 7754294

Claim:
A method of improving film deposition uniformity of a PECVD deposited film, wherein a deposition plasma is formed directly over a substrate surface having an equivalent radius of about 0.7 meter or greater, comprising: providing a substrate having a surface equivalent radius of about 0.7 meter or greater; placing said substrate in a parallel plate processing chamber; setting an electrode spacing between parallel plate electrodes in said parallel plate processing chamber to be below about 1000 mils; setting an R.F. power frequency to be between about 13.56 MHZ and about 3 MHZ; setting an electron density of a plasma used during deposition of said PECVD-deposited film to be less than about 10 10 /cm 3 ; selecting a plasma source gas in which reactive species are dissociated at an electron density used during deposition of said film; setting a total gas flow in said processing chamber so that a volumetric gas turnover rate in said processing chamber is at least 0.015 processing chamber volumes per minute; and depositing said PECVD-deposited film, wherein surface standing wave effects are controlled during film deposition, so that a film deposition rate of at least 1,000Å/min is achieved over said substrate surface having an equivalent radius of about 0.7 meter or greater, in combination with a film thickness variation over said substrate surface of less than about 10.8 %.