Laser cleaning of the metallic thin films from silicon wafer surface with UV laser radiation

The interest to use laser surface processing in microtechnology as a friendly method from the technologic and environmental point of view leaded our studies about laser radiation interaction with photo-resist and metallic thin films. In this view we have tried in our experiments to process metallic thin films deposited on silicon substrate by using laser radiation. To obtain a good quality of the metallic thin film removal from the silicon surface a careful selection of the incident laser intensity, number of pulses and irradiation geometry is needed. The threshold value for the laser cleaning intensity depends on the number of incident laser pulses. A careful experimental estimation of the cleaning conditions from the point of view of incident laser energy, fluence, intensity and irradiation geometry was realized for aluminum, copper, and chromium thin films.