Application of Pulsed Chemical Vapor Deposited Tungsten Thin Film as a Nucleation Layer for Ultrahigh Aspect Ratio Tungsten-Plug Fill Process

Abstract

Tungsten (W) thin film was deposited at 400 °C using pulsed chemical vapor deposition (pulsed CVD); film was then evaluated as a nucleation layer for W-plug deposition at the contact, with an ultrahigh aspect ratio of about 14~15 (top opening diameter: 240~250 nm, bottom diameter: 98~100 nm) for dynamic random access memory. The deposition stage of pulsed CVD has four steps resulting in one deposition cycle: (1) Reaction of WF6 with SiH4. (2) Inert gas purge. (3) SiH4 exposure without WF6 supply. (4) Inert gas purge while conventional CVD consists of the continuous reaction of WF6 and SiH4. The pulsed CVD-W film showed better conformality at contacts compared to that of conventional CVD-W nucleation layer. It was found that resistivities of films deposited by pulsed CVD were closely related with the phases formed and with the microstructure, as characterized by the grain size. A lower contact resistance was obtained by using pulsed CVD-W film as a nucleation layer compared to that of the conventional CVD-W nucleation layer, even though the former has a higher resistivity (~100 μΩ-cm) than that of the latter (~25 μΩ-cm). The plan-view scanning electron microscopy images after focused ion beam milling showed that the lower contact resistance of the pulsed CVD-W based W-plug fill scheme was mainly due to its better plug filling capability.