AVS 53rd International Symposium
    Plasma Science and Technology Tuesday Sessions
       Session PS2-TuP

Paper PS2-TuP2
Enhanced Mechanical Properties of PDEMS@super TM@ Interlayer Dielectric Materials through Tailoring Porogen and OSG Precursor

Tuesday, November 14, 2006, 6:00 pm, Room 3rd Floor Lobby

Session: Etching and Process Integration Poster Session
Presenter: M.K. Haas, Air Products and Chemicals
Authors: M.K. Haas, Air Products and Chemicals
M.L. O'Neill, Air Products and Chemicals
B.K. Peterson, Air Products and Chemicals
R.N. Vrtis, Air Products and Chemicals
S.J. Weigel, Air Products and Chemicals
D.J. Wu, Air Products and Chemicals
Correspondent: Click to Email
Porous organosilicate glasses (OSG) produced by PECVD have arisen as the leading candidates for back-end-of-line dielectric insulators for the 45nm IC manufacturing node. A major consideration for use of these porous materials is their mechanical properties. Here we report a > 30% enhancement in mechanical properties of PDEMS@super TM@ ILD films, and an understanding of the structure-property relationships leading to the enhancement. Previous studies show that diethoxymethylsilane (DEMS) is an optimum network precursor to provide mechanically robust films.@footnote 1-4@ Here we further show that tailoring the porogen allows optimization of the mechanical properties of the film, and effects the average pore size and porosity. For a given dielectric constant, we find that it is more important to maximize the network connectivity of the film than it is to minimize the total porosity. In addition, experimental data support a relationship between pore size and pore interconnectivity, where materials with smaller pores tend to have a more interconnected pore morphology. We report geometric modeling of two-phase composite materials in order to define the theoretical morphological transition between discretely dispersed pores and a homogeneous, low-density OSG matrix. These results have strong implications towards integration process compatibility of the porous films. @FootnoteText@ @footnote 1@M.L. O'Neill, M.K. Haas, B.K. Peterson, R.N. Vrtis, S.J. Weigel, D.J. Wu, M.D. Bitner, and E.J. Karwacki, MRS Symposium Proceedings (2006)@footnote 2@M.L. O'Neill, R.N. Vrtis, J.L. Vincent, A.S. Lukas, E.J. Karwacki, B.K. Peterson, M.D. Bitner, MRS Symposium Proceedings 766, 321 (2003)@footnote 3@ M.L. O'Neill, A.S. Lukas, R.N. Vrtis, M.D. Bitner, E.J. Karwacki, J.L. Vincent, B.K. Peterson, presented at the 2003 American Vacuum Society National Meeting, Baltimore, MD (2003), unpublished@footnote 4@J.L. Vincent, M.L. O'Neill, H.P. Withers, S.E. Beck, and R.N. Vrtis, US Patent 6,583,048 (2003) .