6500

The Tegal 6500 is an etcher used in semiconductor manufacturing. Etchers remove selected material from a wafer after pattern definition, transferring a mask pattern into an underlying film.

Etchers expose wafers to controlled process gases and plasma conditions so that material is removed from areas opened by a resist or hard mask pattern. Dry etch tools of this class are used when directional transfer, material selectivity, and tighter profile control are needed than wet chemical removal would normally provide.

Multi chamber etch tools generally separate wafer handling and process environments so different recipes or repeated process steps can be run with tighter contamination and condition control. Nitride etch processes in this class are typically used to remove silicon nitride films while managing selectivity to adjacent layers and preserving the intended feature shape.

Etch equipment is used after a pattern has been formed on the wafer by lithography and before the remaining masking material is stripped and the wafer moves to later film deposition, clean, inspection, or implant-related steps. Etch sits at the point where a drawn pattern becomes a physical structure in the underlying layer stack.