AVS 61st International Symposium & Exhibition
    Thin Film Friday Sessions
       Session TF+AS-FrM

Paper TF+AS-FrM3
Time Dependent Dielectric Breakdown Measurements of Porous Organosilicate Glass using Mercury and Solid Metal Probes

Friday, November 14, 2014, 9:00 am, Room 307

Session: Thin Film Characterization
Presenter: Dongfei Pei, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Authors: D. Pei, University of Wisconsin-Madison
M.T. Nichols, Applied Materials
S.W. King, Intel Corporation
J.M. Clarke, Intel Corporation
Y. Nishi, Stanford University
J.L. Shohet, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Correspondent: Click to Email
Time-dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB) is a major concern for low-k organosilicate (SiCOH) dielectrics. To examine the effect of plasma exposure on TDDB degradation, both the time-to-failure (TTF) and charge-to-failure (CTF) measurements [1] were made on porous SiCOH before and after exposure to Ar plasma. Significant discrepancies between mercury and solid-metal probes are observed. With XPS measurement data, a significant amount of mercury was found to have drifted into the porous SiCOH film. This implies that the electrical measurement of porous low-k material under mercury probe may be inaccurate due to this mercury drift effect.

This work was supported by the Semiconductor Research Corporation under Contract 2012-KJ-2359 and by the National Science Foundation under Grant CBET-1066231.

[1] M. T. Nichols, H. Sinha, C. A. Wiltbank, G. A. Antonelli, Y. Nishi, and J. L. Shohet, Appl. Phys. Lett 100, 112905 (2012)