Improvement on intrinsic electrical properties of low-k hydrogen silsesquioxane/copper interconnects employing deuterium plasma treatment

The interaction between copper interconnects and low-k hydrogen silsesquioxane (HSQ) film was investigated using a Cu/HSQ/Si metal insulation semiconductor capacitor and deuterium plasma post-treatment. Owing to serious diffusion of copper atoms in HSQ film, the degradations of dielectric properties are significant with the increase of thermal stress. The leakage current behavior In high-field conduction was well explained by the Poole-Frenkel (P-F) mechanism. By applying deuterium plasma treatment to HSQ film, however, the leakage current was decreased and P-F conduction can be suppressed. In addition, the phenomena of serious Cu penetration were not observed by means of electrical characteristic measurements and secondary ion mass spectroscopy analysis, even in the absence of diffusion barrier layers. This indicates that copper diffusion in low-k HSQ film can be effectively blocked by deuterium plasma post-treatment. Therefore, further improvement in resistance-capacitance reduction can be obtained due to the minimized thickness requirement for conventional barriers such as inorganic Si3N4 and metallic TaN layers. (C) 2000 The Electrochemical Society S0013-4651(99)08-022-2. All rights reserved.