Nucleation, wetting and agglomeration of copper and copper-alloy thin films on metal liner surfaces.

摘要

One of the key challenges in fabricating narrower and higher aspect ratio interconnects using damascene technology has been achieving an ultra-thin (∼2 nm) and continuous Cu seed coverage on trench sidewalls. The thin seed is prone to agglomeration because of poor Cu wetting on the Ta liner. Using in-situ conductance measurements, the effect of lowering the substrate temperature during Cu seed deposition has been studied on tantalum (Ta) and ruthenium (Ru) liner surfaces. On a Ta surface, it was found that lowering the deposition temperature to --65°C increases the nucleation rate of the Cu thin film, and reduces the minimum coalescing thickness for Cu on Ta liner from ∼4.5 nm (at room temperature) to ∼2 nm. On a Ru surface, Cu coalesces at 1 nm at room temperature, and no further reduction in initial coalescing thickness was found at low temperature. For the Cu seed deposited at --65°C on a Ta liner on trench sidewalls, extensive thermal stress-induced grain growth was observed during warming up to room temperature. No grain growth was observed in the seed layer deposited at low temperatures on a Ru liner.;Small feature size and high current densities make electromigration an important concern for on-chip Cu interconnects. Cu-alloy seeds or Cu-alloy interconnects are therefore needed for future technology. The wetting angle, coalescing thickness, and agglomeration resistance of thin Cu-3% Au, Cu-3% Mn, and Cu-3% Al layers on a Ta liner surface have been studied. It was found that the alloying increases the wetting angle of Cu on Ta at high temperature, as a result of either reduction in Cu alloy surface energy, solute surface segregation, or solute-liner interactions. In addition, the Cu alloys were found to be less agglomeration resistive as compared to pure Cu; their smaller grain size, interaction with the liner surface, and tendency to oxidize were found to accelerate their agglomeration. The coalescing thickness of the Cu alloys was found to be reduced from that of Cu (∼4.5 nm) to ∼2 nm.