| AVS 54th International Symposium | |
| Thin Film | Thursday Sessions |
| Session TF-ThP |
| Session: | Aspects of Thin Films Poster Session |
| Presenter: | M. Kawamura, Kitami Institute of Technology, Japan |
| Authors: | M. Kawamura, Kitami Institute of Technology, Japan Y. Inami, Kitami Institute of Technology, Japan Y. Abe, Kitami Institute of Technology, Japan K. Sasaki, Kitami Institute of Technology, Japan |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Improvements of thermal stability of Ag thin films, featured with the lowest resistivity among all metals, have been attempted. Especially, Ag thin films on dielectric oxide layers are expected for metallization materials in future electronic devices if the improvement is achieved. One of the common ways is alloying the Ag films, but it is difficult to preserve its low resistivity due to impurity scattering effect of electrons in some cases. We show a result of structural modification, where very thin Al layers (about 1 or 3 nm of thickness) were introduced at top and/or bottom of the Ag, namely Al/Ag/Al, Ag/Al and Al/Ag structures. The Al/Ag/Al structure showed excellent stability on surface morphology and electrical resistivity even after annealing at 600oC in vacuum. It is considered that the deposited thin Al layers changed into thin Al oxide layers and resulted in capping (and/or passivation) of Ag film and better adhesion with oxide substrate. The resistivity of the film was also as low as that of bulk Ag. The Al layer at the top of Ag film showed better result than that at the bottom. Therefore, it is found that inhibition of surface diffusion of Ag films is more important to prevent agglomeration of Ag thin films. Consequently, it is found that the structural modification is very useful to obtain thermally stable Ag thin films without agglomeration even after annealing at 600oC.