Physical and Interfacial Properties of Low Permittivity Polymers: Silk and Ultra-Low K

In the last 5 years, the requirement for low k polymer dielectric in on-chip interconnects has resulted in a considerable effort by both material and tool suppliers in product development, thin film characterization and process integration development. The acceleration of the ITRS roadmap and company-specific integration requirements imposes very specific property requirements onto the low k dielectrics. SiLK* Semiconductor Dielectric was developed specifically to accommodate the needs imposed by high performance interconnect systems fabricated using either a subtractive Al/W [1] and Cu [2,3] damascene architecture. Besides faster clock speeds, ICs needs denser I/O to get this information on and off the chip faster and faster. Low k polymers, Cyclotene* Advance Electronics Resin (BCB) are also being used to build these dense arrays of bond pads and bumps [4].