Patent ID: 7906032

Claim:
A method of conditioning a processing chamber for a production process, the method comprising: a first process including: transferring a new bare silicon wafer into the process chamber, performing a conditioning step for a predetermined time at a conditioning process recipe substantially different than a process recipe of the production process, wherein said substantially different process recipe is a process recipe that will provide process results that are outside control limits of the production process, including providing a first RF power to an upper electrode in the processing chamber, wherein the first RF power is between approximately 500 Watts and approximately 1200 Watts and the first RF power is higher than an RF power used in the production process, removing the bare silicon wafer from the process chamber; and performing a wafer-less dry cleaning step at a predetermined recipe for a predetermined time; repeating the first process at least ten times; transferring another new bare silicon wafer into the process chamber, performing an O 2 dry cleaning step at a predetermined recipe, and removing the bare silicon wafer from the process chamber at the end of the O 2 dry cleaning step: transferring another new bare silicon wafer into the process chamber and performing a warm-up process, which is a process that uses a warm-up process recipe which is substantially the same as the process recipe of the production process, removing the bare silicon wafer after the warm-up process, and repeating the warp-up process on another new bare silicon wafer.