Patent ID: 8500951

Claim:
An apparatus for etching a bevel edge of a substrate, comprising: a plasma processing chamber, comprising: a chamber wall forming a plasma processing chamber enclosure; a substrate support for supporting a substrate within the plasma processing chamber enclosure, wherein the substrate support has a diameter smaller than a diameter of the substrate; a pressure regulator for regulating the pressure in the plasma processing chamber enclosure; at least one electrode for providing power to the plasma processing chamber enclosure for sustaining a plasma; a gas inlet for providing gas into the plasma processing chamber enclosure; and a gas outlet for exhausting gas from the plasma processing chamber enclosure; a gas source in fluid connection with the gas inlet, comprising: a cleaning gas source; and an etch layer etch gas source; and a controller controllably connected to the gas source and the at least one electrode, comprising: at least one processor; and non-transitory computer readable media comprising: computer readable code for forming a patterned photoresist mask over an etch layer; computer readable code for etching features into the etch layer through the photoresist features; computer readable code for removing the photoresist mask; computer readable code for cleaning the bevel edge after said removing the photoresist mask, comprising: computer readable code for providing a cleaning gas comprising at least one of a CO 2 or CO; computer readable code for forming a cleaning plasma from the cleaning gas; and computer readable code for exposing the bevel edge to the cleaning plasma, the bevel edge exposed to the cleaning plasma including at least an edge portion of a top surface at an edge of the substrate; wherein the plasma processing chamber further comprises a gas distribution plate; and wherein the computer readable code for forming the cleaning plasma compises: computer readable code for placing the gas distribution plate at a close distance from a top surface of the substrate such that the cleaning plasma is not formed between the gas distribution plate and the substrate during the bevel edge cleaning.