In view of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been decided to postpone the UCPSS 2020 Conference to 12-15 April 2021. The safety and health of participants of UCPSS 2020 is the first priority of the organizing committee.
The conference will also be held in a new location:

the Lamot Conference and Heritage Centre, in the historic down-town of Mechelen (Belgium).
Van Beethovenstraat 8-10
B – 2800 Mechelen

The Symposium on Ultra Clean Processing of Semiconductor Surfaces (http://www.ucpss.org) is a bi-annual international event focussing on contamination control, cleaning and surface preparation for micro and nano-technology for electronic applications and related fields such bio-electronics. In past editions it gathered 250 to 300 experts and specialists.

Registrations for the conference are open.

Topics

This symposium is bi-annual event devoted to Cleaning and surface preparation for micro and nano-technology for electronic applications and related fields such as Photo-voltaics and bio-electronics.

It is the purpose of the UCPSS symposium to increase the level of understanding on ultra-clean processing and surface preparation technology in all steps of the fabrication of ICs, PV-modules and bioelectronics devices. The conference consists of invited presentations, as well as selected contributing presentations and posters.

The topics to be addressed include, but are not limited to:
• Fundamentals of contaminants on surfaces and contamination-substrate interactions.
• Removal of contaminants in all steps of micro-, nano-electronics applications and 3D-integration. • Surface chemistry, passivation, conditioning and characterization of group IV and III/V materials (Si, Ge, SiGe, SiC, InP, GaAs and InGaAs) for sensitive FEOL processes (high-k-metal gate stacks dielectrics, Ge surfaces, III-V, CVD and MBE- epitaxy, ALD, SAM deposition).
• Post-CMP clean for advanced Logic, Memory and 3D-applications.
• Cleaning and advanced etching schemes in advanced RMG and work function tuning.
• Surface processing in high-aspect ratio trenches and vias.
• Surface processing and drying of flexible and fragile high aspect ratio topography: leaning, sticking, collapse.
• Chemical and physical cleaning in liquid, gaseous, vapour, remote plasma and supercritical fluids (e.g. scCO2).
• Cleaning and surface preparation for novel materials for Qubits (quantum computing) and advanced memory applications (DRAM, Flash memory, PCM, RRAM, MRAM, STT, ...:): magnetic materials, OTS-materials, topological insulators,…
• BEOL strip and cleans, including corrosion issues of aggressively scaled interconnect schemes • Trade-offs between cleaning performance, substrate damage and etching.
• Contamination/particle control and its relation with process yield or performance.
• Importance of ambient control during fabrication, transport or storage for wafer surface cleanliness.
• Yield enhancement cleans: wafer backside, bevel.
• Removal of (modified) photo resist, post etch residues and polymers.
• Analytical methods, process and contamination diagnostics, in-situ monitoring and process control.
• General issues in ultra-clean technology, ultra-pure materials and supply systems.
• Safety, environmentally friendly technologies and mass balance equations.
• Challenges of cleaning EUV-masks.
• Transfer, cleaning and surface preparation of 2D-materials (graphene, WS2, MoS2, WSe2, ...).
• Surface functionalization, e.g. based on SAMs or other methods.
• Surfaces for integrated bio-electronic sensors.
• Surface preparation and functionalization for integrated microfluidic bio-sensor devices: including immobilization of bio-molecules on sensor substrates.
• Cleaning and surface preparation for photovoltaic applications, M- and N-EMS.

Organised by  imec