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Test structures have been fabricated to allow electrical critical dimensions (ECD) to be extracted from copper features with dimensions comparable to those replicated in integrated circuit (IC) interconnect systems. The implementation of these structures is such that no conductive barrier metal has been used. The advantage of this approach is that the electrical measurements provide a nondestructive and efficient method for determining critical dimension (CD) values and for enabling fundamental studies of electron transport in narrow copper features unaffected by the complications of barrier metal films. This paper reports on the results of tests which have been conducted to evaluate various extraction methods for sheet resistance and line width values from the current design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A systematic investigation of the current and frequency dependence of the quantum Hall resistance (QHR) and of the longitudinal resistivity has been carried out at low temperature at the center of the plateau i = 2. The deviation of the QHR from the von Klitzing constant is found to be proportional to the longitudinal resistivity and extrapolates to zero, within the measurement uncertainty, when the dissipation in the two-dimensional electron gas vanishes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST) is developing single-crystal reference materials for use as critical dimension (CD) reference materials. In earlier work, the reference features on these reference materials have been in the device layer of a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers, with the buried oxide providing electrical isolation. This paper describes a new method of Slating the structures from the substrate by mews of a pn junction. The junction isolation technique is expected to provide several advantages over the SOI technique Including minimal susceptibility to charging when imaged in a CD scanning electron microscope (CDSEM), better edge quality, and ease of manufacture. Primary calibration of these reference materials is by imaging the cross-section of the feature with high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) at sufficiently high energy to resolve and count the individual lattice planes while electrical test structure metrology techniques provide the transfer calibration. Secondary calibration is performed with electrical test structure metrology, supplemented by visual techniques to verify that the features meet uniformity requirements. In this paper, we describe results for determining the electrical critical dimensions of these junction-isolated structures. This measurement and data analysis technique is a unique combination of the short-bridge variation of the cross-bridge resistor and the multi-bridge structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]