Patent ID: 7111629

Claim:
A surface cleaning method using plasma for fabrication of an integrated circuit in a surface cleaning apparatus having a chamber that can be maintained in a vacuum state, a substrate mount for mounting a substrate, a first processing gas inlet for introducing a carrier gas for generation and maintenance of plasma, a plasma generator, a filter for passing only radicals to said substrate, and a second processing gas inlet, the method comprising the steps of: forming a polymer layer of NxHyFz on a natural oxide layer on said substrate during patterning step wherein forming said polymer layer comprises the steps of generating a plasma by introducing a first processing gas of H 2 and N 2 mixture into said first processing gas inlet and introducing a second processing HF gas into said second processing gas inlet into said plasma; and removing said polymer layer and said natural oxide layer by annealing wherein components of said polymer layer are decomposed and combined with the components of said natural oxide layer and removed, further comprising a step of filtering said plasma to pass only radicals after said step of generating said plasma by introducing said first processing gas of H 2 and N 2 mixture and said step of introducing said second processing HF gas into said plasma.