Influence of sidewall roughness on the reliability of 0.20-μm Al RIE wiring

Author

Ravikumar, R. ; Cichy, H. ; Filippi, R.G. ; Kiewra, E.W. ; Rath, D.L. ; Stojakovic, G.

Author_Institution

DRAM Dev. Alliance, Siemens Microelectron. Inc., Hopewell Junction, NY, USA

fYear

1999

fDate

1999

Firstpage

146

Lastpage

148

Abstract

Aluminum based wiring is widely used in the back-end-of-line (BEOL) metallization of integrated circuits. In a 256 Mb dynamic random access memory (DRAM) product, the first level of Al wiring exists at a 0.20 μm ground rule. Performance and reliability issues from these aggressive ground rules result in serious challenges for semiconductor fabrication processing at the BEOL. This paper compares two different sidewall roughness profiles which were created by varying the post-metal etch wet clean. The resulting “rough” and “smooth” sidewall profiles are correlated with the electrical performance and reliability characteristics of the 256 Mb-DRAM product

Keywords

DRAM chips; aluminium; integrated circuit interconnections; integrated circuit metallisation; integrated circuit reliability; integrated circuit testing; sputter etching; surface cleaning; surface topography; 0.2 micron; 256 Mbit; Al; Al RIE wiring; Al wiring; BEOL metallization; DRAM; DRAM product; aluminum based wiring; back-end-of-line metallization; dynamic random access memory product; electrical performance; ground rule; integrated circuits; post-metal etch wet clean; reliability; reliability characteristics; rough sidewall profile; semiconductor fabrication processing; sidewall roughness; sidewall roughness profiles; smooth sidewall profile; Aluminum; Copper; Current density; Electric resistance; Electromigration; Microelectronics; Random access memory; Testing; Wet etching; Wiring;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Interconnect Technology, 1999. IEEE International Conference

Conference_Location

San Francisco, CA

Print_ISBN

0-7803-5174-6

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IITC.1999.787104

Filename

787104