Title :
Electrical conduction effect on reliability of low-k dielectric in Cu interconnect
Author :
Mingte Lin ; Juan, Alex ; Su, K.C.
Author_Institution :
United Microelectron. Corp., Hsinchu, Taiwan
Abstract :
Copper and low-k dielectrics as interconnect materials for advanced microelectronic devices have reliability concerns due to their electrical and mechanical vulnerability. The leakage current of low-k dielectric was studied widely to understand the reliability property. Previous studies focused on intra level voltage bias and emphasized the effect and leakage conduction mechanism in the cap layer, but the role of low k dielectric was not clear [1]. Other low-k leakage study showed different conduction mechanism but not under practical interconnect environment [2]. The characteristic of carrier injection between metal and dielectric was not well addressed previously. Therefore, we study the leakage currents of intra and inter level low-k dielectric with different electron injection directions in practical IC environment, in order to have thorough understanding of the conduction effect on low-k dielectric reliability.
Keywords :
copper; dielectric materials; electrical conductivity; leakage currents; semiconductor device reliability; Cu; advanced microelectronic devices; carrier injection; electrical conduction effect; electron injection; interconnect materials; leakage conduction mechanism; leakage current; low-k dielectric reliability; Dielectrics; Electric breakdown; Electric fields; Leakage currents; Metals; Reliability; Stress;
Conference_Titel :
Reliability Science for Advanced Materials and Devices (RSAMD), 2013 IEEE Conference on
Conference_Location :
Golden, CO
DOI :
10.1109/RSAMD.2013.6647896