The Development of a Chemistry and Process for Cu Damascene Plating – from Research to Development to Manufacturing

Electroplated Cu lines has been successfully used in the back-end-of-the-line (BEOL) interconnects in the IC industry for more than a decade.^[1,2] As the technology continues to advance and the dimension continues to scale, advanced Cu plating chemistry is always in demand to meet the defectivity, electrical yield and reliability requirements.

A typical three-component chemistry consists of a suppressor, an accelerator and a leveler. Among them, the suppressor and accelerator are generally thought to enable the super conformal filling.^[3-7] While the presence of the leveler is believed to have little impact on the super filling, it mitigates the surface topography as a result of the so-called momentum plating.^[8-10] In addition, the leveler also provides a way to control the impurity in the plated Cu as well as the cosmetic defects on the Cu surface.^[10-12]

In this talk, we will showcase how a new plating chemistry was developed, commercialized and implemented for semiconductor manufacturing. The full cycle of research, development and manufacturing implementation and their correlations will be presented.

REFERENCES

¹     P. Andricacos et al.,  IBM Journal of Research and Development 42 (5), 567 (1998).

²     D. Edelstein et al., Proceedings of International Electron Devices Meeting, IEDM, (1997).

³     T. P. Moffat et al.,  Journal of The Electrochemical Society 147, 4524 (2000).

⁴     T. P. Moffat et al.,  Electrochemical and Solid-State Letters 4, C26 (2001).

⁵     A. C. West, S. Mayer, and J. Reid,  Electrochemical and Solid-State Letters 4, C50 (2001).

⁶     T. Moffat et al.,  IBM Journal of Research and Development 49 (1), 19 (2005).

⁷     R. Akolkar and U. Landau,  Journal of The Electrochemical Society 151, C702 (2004).

⁸     S. Kim, D. Josell, and T. Moffat,  Journal of The Electrochemical Society 153, C826 (2006).

⁹     T. P. Moffat et al.,  Journal of The Electrochemical Society 153, C127 (2006).

¹⁰    J. D. Reid et al., Proceedings of 205th ECS Meeting - International Symposium on Electrochemical Processing in ULSI and MEMS, San Antonio, TX, (2005).

¹¹    J. Sukamto and J. Reid, Proceedings of 205th ECS Meeting - International Symposium on Electrochemical Processing in ULSI and MEMS, San Antonio, TX, (2005).

¹²    J. D. Reid and J. Zhou, Proceedings of 209th ECS Meeting - International Symposium on Electrochemical Processing in ULSI and MEMS 2, Denver, CO, (2007).