AVS 58th Annual International Symposium and Exhibition
    Electronic Materials and Processing Division Wednesday Sessions
       Session EM-WeM

Paper EM-WeM6
Fundamental Characterization of Amorphous Hydrogenated Boron Carbide Toward its use as a Low-k Dielectric Material

Wednesday, November 2, 2011, 9:40 am, Room 210

Session: Low-k Materials and Devices
Presenter: Bradley Nordell, University of Missouri-Kansas City
Authors: B.J. Nordell, University of Missouri-Kansas City
S. Karki, University of Missouri-Kansas City
C. Clayton, University of Missouri-Kansas City
M.S. Driver, University of Missouri-Kansas City
M.M. Paquette, University of Missouri-Kansas City
A.N. Caruso, University of Missouri-Kansas City
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The development of stable and low-dielectric-constant (i.e., low-k) materials for interlayer dielectrics (ILDs) in ultra-large-scale integrated circuits has become an essential target for the semiconductor industry. Toward this end, several low-Z boron-based materials (e.g., boron nitrides and boron carbonitrides) have been studied due to their exceptional thermal, mechanical, and chemical stability, which have exhibited k values as low as 1.9–2.4. Amorphous hydrogenated boron carbide, in turn, may be an even more promising low-k boron-based material on the basis of the lower polarity of B–C bonds relative to B–N bonds and the mesoscopically porous icosahedral cage structure of boron-rich carbides which can exhibit significantly lower free volume, particularly for the low-density amorphous hydrogenated variants. Moreover, amorphous hydrogenated boron carbide films grown by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) methods from carborane precursors exhibit resistivity’s >1×〖10〗^10 ohm-cm. This talk will describe the causal relationship between the measured dielectric constant, resistivity, breakdown voltage, hardness, Young’s Modulus, and mass/density as a function of the PECVD growth parameters (power, pressure, substrate temperature, and gas flow) and film composition (notably hydrogen and oxygen content) in the context of establishing and optimizing amorphous hydrogenated boron carbide as a next-generation durable and resilient low-k ILD.