Electrical properties of low-k dielectric in copper interconnect structures

The electrical properties, leakage current and capacitance, of inter and intra level low-k dielectrics are investigated thoroughly with different voltage bias conditions. The leakage currents show important bias polarity dependence with different conduction mechanisms and have stress effects on different structure designs. The novel nonlinear voltage dependence of inter level low-k capacitance at different temperature is demonstrated for the first time. This nonlinear voltage dependence is very important for capacitance linearity improvement consideration.