Use of electric force microscopy to detect process-induced, nanoscale dielectric damage of low k oxides

There is some concern that processing (ash/reactive ion etch) may increase the dielectric constant of the etched structures and thereby diminish or remove the advantage of the low k dielectric. We proposed that electric force microscopy (EFM) should be able to resolve dielectric constant variations with approximately 50 nm spatial resolution in properly prepared samples. This report presents preliminary results that show that EFM is able to detect damage and that processing does indeed cause damage.