Impact of ambient atmosphere on plasma-damaged porous low-k characterization

Improving Integrated Circuits performance requires the use of porous SiCOH in interconnects. However, porosity leads to plasma species diffusion into the material during the patterning steps, which damages the low-k properties. Characterizing plasma-damaged porous SiCOH is not straightforward, and requires a specific characterization setup and protocol. In this paper, we show the impact of the ambient atmosphere on the low-k properties, and how it should be taken into account during the characterization of plasma-damaged porous SiCOH.