| AVS 64th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Thin Films Division | Thursday Sessions |
| Session TF+SE-ThM |
| Session: | Control, Characterization, and Modeling of Thin Films I |
| Presenter: | Agnès Tempez, Horiba France S.a.s., France |
| Authors: | A.L. Tempez, Horiba France S.a.s., France Y. Mazel, CEA/LETI-University Grenoble Alpes, France J.-P. Barnes, CEA/LETI-University Grenoble Alpes, France E. Nolot, CEA/LETI-University Grenoble Alpes, France S. Legendre, Horiba France S.a.s., France M. Chausseau, HORIBA Instruments Incorporated |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Wouldn’t it be a considerable gain of time to be able to check the stoichiometry of just deposited thin films in a few minutes? A recently commercially available sputter-based technique called plasma profiling time-of-flight mass spectrometry (PP-TOFMS) is capable to produce, in a few minutes, nm-scale depth resolved profiles of all elements (including light elements) of the periodic table, over a wide dynamic range (from 100% down to ppm)[1]. A simple ratio of the amount of ions detected from a given layer provides a calibration free semi-quantification.
For such fast feedback purposes a PP-TOFMS instrument (Horiba Scientific, Horiba FRANCE SAS, France) has been installed in the clean room of the CEA-LETI in close proximity to process tools.
In this paper we will present data obtained from microelectronics and nanotechnology thin films to demonstrate the performance of the technique. It will be shown that PP-TOFMS can be used for determining composition, detecting contamination, measuring doping level, and characterizing diffusion mechanisms.
For example we will show the ease of detecting, identifying, and locating in depth the presence of unexpected contamination in magnetic Iron Cobalt Boron multi-layers. Another example will show the depth profile of a Germanium Antimony Tellurium alloy deposited on silicon oxide used for phase change memories, a type of non-volatile random access memory. PP-TOFMS depth profiles agree with TOF-SIMS and STEM-EDX analyses for both the first nanometers and the in-depth composition.
[1] A. Tempez et al., J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B (2016) 34