Used TEL EXIM™

TEL EXIM™ is a single-wafer plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD) platform from Tokyo Electron (TEL), designed for 300mm advanced logic and memory chip manufacturing. It specializes in the deposition of dielectric thin films at low temperatures with high conformality, positioning it as a direct competitor to the ASM XP8 PEALD series.

Process Positioning: EXIM utilizes a plasma-enhanced ALD approach to achieve film formation at low temperatures. Typical applications include low-temperature spacer layers for multi-patterning, gate sidewall spacers, contact hole liners and gap-fill, as well as hard-mask dielectric films. Plasma enhancement enables the creation of dense films within a lower thermal budget, making it well-suited for advanced-node integration schemes that are sensitive to thermal stability.

Platform Design: The system is built on TEL’s 300mm cluster architecture, allowing for the integration of multiple process modules to meet high-volume manufacturing throughput requirements. The reaction chamber features a low-volume design, combined with precise control over precursor pulsing and purging, ensuring atomic-level thickness accuracy and conformal coverage within high-aspect-ratio structures. The single-wafer processing mode delivers excellent within-wafer uniformity and wafer-to-wafer repeatability, while also supporting flexible switching between different process recipes.

Applications: EXIM is primarily used for spacer layers and patterning modules in advanced logic chips, and it can also be employed for conformal dielectric deposition in memory devices. It complements TEL’s thermal ALD platform, EVAROS—with EXIM focusing on low-temperature PEALD dielectric films and EVAROS on high-k gate dielectrics—together addressing a diverse range of single-wafer film deposition requirements for advanced nodes.

In short, EXIM is TEL’s primary production-ready platform for PEALD at advanced nodes, operating in the same market segment as the ASM XP8 DCM/QCM PEALD systems you have previously looked into.