An integrated plasma equipment-feature scale model for ionized metal physical vapor deposition

Abstract

Summary form only given. Ionized metal physical vapor deposition (IMPVD) is used to deposit diffusion barriers and metal seed layers into high aspect ratio trenches for interconnect wiring in the fabrication of microelectronics devices. To decrease the RC time delay of signals, Cu interconnects are replacing Al whose resistance is almost twice that of Cu. To improve the design of IMPVD systems, it is useful to have a comprehensive simulator. To address this need, an integrated plasma equipment-feature model has been developed, and applied to the investigation of Cu IMPVD. The computational tools use in this study are the two-dimensional Hybrid Plasma Equipment Model (HPEM), the Plasma Chemistry Monte Carlo Simulation (PCMCS) and the Monte Carlo feature profile model (MCFPIM). The HPEM produces species densities and source functions in the bulk plasma. The PCMCS computes the trajectories of ions and neutral species which are incident onto features based on the species densities and sources from the HPEM. The MCFPM uses these fluxes to simulate the deposition profile in a trench. The MCFPM, originally written for etching, was extended to deposition by adding surface diffusion algorithms. These algorithms use Monte Carlo techniques to move adsorbed pseudoparticles on the surface employing probabilities based on the local inter-particle potentials.