Search

A 3-aminopropyltrimethoxysilane-derived self-assembled monolayer (NH 2 SAM) is investigated as a barrier against copper diffusion for application in back-end-of-line (BEOL) technology. The essential characteristics studied include thermal stability to BEOL processing, inhibition of copper diffusion, and adhesion to both the underlying SiO 2 dielectric substrate and the Cu over-layer. Time-of flight secondary ion mass spectrometry and X-ray spectroscopy (XPS) analysis reveal that the copper over-layer closes at 1-2-nm thickness, comparable with the 1.3-nm closure of state-of-the-art Ta/TaN Cu diffusion barriers. That the NH 2 SAM remains intact upon Cu deposition and subsequent annealing is unambiguously revealed by energy-filtered transmission electron microscopy supported by XPS. The SAM forms a well-defined carbon-rich interface with the Cu over-layer and electron energy loss spectroscopy shows no evidence of Cu penetration into the SAM. Interestingly, the adhesion of the Cu/NH 2 SAM/SiO 2 system increases with annealing temperature up to 7.2 J m -2 at 400°C, comparable to Ta/TaN (7.5 J m -2 at room temperature). The corresponding fracture analysis shows that when failure does occur it is located at the Cu/SAM interface. Overall, these results demonstrate that NH 2 SAM is a suitable candidate for subnanometer-scale diffusion barrier application in a selective coating for copper advanced interconnects.

The RC delay and power restrictions imposed by the interconnect system can contribute to poor circuit performance in an increasingly severe manner as dimensions shrink. Resistances are increasing faster than the scale factor of the technology and capacitance improvements are constrained by mechanical requirements of the assembled stack. Collectively, these cause a bottleneck in both local and global information transfer on a chip. Novel deposition methods and novel conductor materials are being explored as means to increase conductive cross sectional area. Molecular ordering is an opportunity to simultaneously deliver capacitance and mechanical strength. Despite these improvement paths, a more holistic approach to interconnect design is needed, where the application and micro architecture are more tolerant of RC scaling constraints.

The effects of suspension and functionalisation on electrical conduction of silicon nanowires (SiNWs) are experimentally investigated towards highly sensitive chemical and biological detection applications. The conductance is found to be affected by the suspension process, while it shows the similar trend against the temperature before and after the suspension. The reduction of conductance after the functionalisation with NH"2 self-assembled monolayer/glutaraldehyde/biotin can be explained based on the assumption that there is a charge transfer from the SiNW to the molecular layers. The temperature insensitive conductance found in the functionalised SiNWs experimentally for the first time is expected to be extremely useful for practical sensing applications.

The trend for future integrated circuits (IC) is decreasing in size beyond the conventional limits. The recent transition from aluminum to copper as the interconnect material for IC is due to copper's higher resistance to electromigration and its lower resistivity. Unfortunately, copper has high mobility in Si and SiO2 and may cause destruction of electrical connections on the chip. Hence, there is a significant necessity in finding ultra thin, thermally stable, high quality and good adhered diffusion barriers. The most widely used barrier is pure Ta films or layer stacks consisting of Ta and TaN. These have excellent conformality, very good uniformity and high thermal stability. But The continuous scaling down of the interconnect dimensions lead to an essential decrease in the barrier layer effective thickness to less than 5nm; coupled with the replacement of silicon oxide by advanced low-k dielectrics it demand further improvements of the diffusion barrier performance. For that reason Self-assembled monolayers (SAMs), with thicknesses of 2nm or less, have been propose for copper diffusion barrier application. By tailoring the structure of these monomolecular organic films, atomic scale properties can be controlled and selective surfaces and interfaces can be engine as desired for a specific application. In the presented work, the quality of an amino-terminated SAM barrier (NH2SAM) is tested. A high density and the absence of pinholes in the barrier layer are essential for a good barrier performance. First, the macroscopic quality of the NH2SAM barrier has been characterized by Water contact angle (CA) and High resolution AFM (HR-AFM). Secondly, the density and the presence and/or absence of pinholes have been tested by Ellipsometry and Cylic Voltametry (CV). Finally, the intrinsic barrier performance in form of Time- dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB) lifetime has been extracted from planar capacitor structures that permitted to measure the leakage/Cu diffusion through barrier in the vertical direction. The Contact angle of layers formed at different deposition times show a variation of the hydrophilic SiO2 substrate to hydrophobic already with 1min deposited NH2SAM layer. A 15min deposited NH2SAM (~1nm), results in a continuous and pinhole free layer observed by HR-AFM. The refraction index (η) calculated by ellipsometry, indicates an increase in the density of the layer with the deposition time. On the other hand, cyclic voltametry shows inhibition of the electrochemical reduction of Fe3+ specimen to Fe2+ when NH2SAM are formed on ~2nmSiO2/Si electrodes. A decrease in the capacitive current is observed by increasing the layer thickness and density. The intrinsic barrier performance of the NH2SAM barrier by TDDB is demonstrated with an increase of 10 times the capacitor lifetime by comparing with no barrier system.

This paper investigates a selective self-assembly process for formation of a self-assembled monolayers (SAM) barrier to Cu diffusion in dual damascene integration. In selecting a barrier, trichlorosilanes are promising due to their high thermal stability (above 550degC) and dense molecular packing. Overall, this study demonstrates that the tuneable structure and chemistry of SAMs provides a molecular level engineering approach for future device structures.