A study of aluminum sputter deposition parameters and TiW barrier surface effects on electromigration

Author

Singlevich, Scott G. ; Bordelon, Mark D.

Author_Institution

Harris Semicond. Sector, Melbourne, FL, USA

fYear

1990

fDate

12-13 Jun 1990

Firstpage

371

Lastpage

373

Abstract

This work investigates the impact of thin-film processing parameters on the electromigration (EM) performance of an AlSi/TiW metallization system. The results show that the EM performance of aluminum on a TiW barrier is worse than that of a nonbarrier film and that oxidizing and/or nitriding the TiW barrier prior to AlSi deposition improves fine-line EM performance by more than an order of magnitude. However, the wide-line EM performance is reduced by a factor of two. It is concluded that the EM performance of the AlSi/TiW film is dominated by the interface of the films and is not significantly changed by the AlSi sputter deposition parameters. The effect is shown to be related to the aluminum grain size. The grain size is increased from about 0.8 μm to 4.0-5.0 μm when the TiW is exposed to atmosphere prior to aluminum deposition

Keywords

aluminium alloys; electromigration; grain size; integrated circuit technology; interface phenomena; metallisation; silicon alloys; sputter deposition; sputtered coatings; titanium alloys; tungsten alloys; Al grain size; AlSi-TiW; VLSI multilevel interconnects; barrier surface effects; electromigration; fine line performance; interface; metallization system; sputter deposition parameters; thin-film processing parameters; wide line performance; Aluminum; Annealing; Electromigration; Metallization; Sputtering; Surface treatment; Temperature; Tensile stress; Testing; Thermal stresses;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

VLSI Multilevel Interconnection Conference, 1990. Proceedings., Seventh International IEEE

Conference_Location

Santa Clara, CA

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/VMIC.1990.127901

Filename

127901