| AVS 63rd International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Thin Film | Thursday Sessions |
| Session TF-ThP |
| Session: | Thin Films Poster Session |
| Presenter: | Dongfei Pei, University of Wisconsin-Madison |
| Authors: | D. Pei, University of Wisconsin-Madison W. Li, University of Wisconsin-Madison P. Xue, University of Wisconsin-Madison S.W. King, Intel Corp Y. Nishi, Stanford University J.L. Shohet, University of Wisconsin-Madison |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Plasma-induced damage is a major concern of the application of low-k dielectric materials in the backend of the line (BOEL) of integrated circuits. Plasma processing, which involves reactive radicals, ion bombardment and vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) irradiation, can cause serious effects on the electrical properties of low-k dielectric materials. The contribution of VUV photons to the damage process was studied in this work. Synchrotron irradiation was used to simulate VUV photon irradiation from processing plasmas without any particle flux. The photon flux varies with the wavelength so the irradiation time was chosen to produce the similar amount of photon fluence at each photon energy. The time dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB), leakage current, k-value, bandgap and mobile charge of the VUV irradiated low-k dielectric films were measured and compared. FTIR, XPS and ESR analysis were applied to the films. An energy threshold for the VUV photons to induce damage of low-k dielectrics was found. TDDB degradation, leakage current increase and mobile charge generation were observed in low-k dielectric films irradiated by the VUV photon with energy above the threshold.
This work was supported by the Semiconductor Research Corporation under Contract 2012-KJ-2359