Effect of substrate bias on the formation of nanotwin and properties in Cu thin films for advanced packaging technology

Abstract

Materials with nanotwinned structures have drawn much attention due to their unique properties. The high-density nanotwinned Cu films are generally deposited at room temperature with high deposition rate. In this study, we report nanotwins can be formed in the Cu films at 150 °C with the aid of the ion bombardment effect caused by applied substrate bias. Cu thin films were deposited on Si (100) substrate by the unbalanced magnetron sputtering system using different applied substrate biases ranging from 0 V to −160 V. The results show that, with a suitable applied substrate bias of −120 V, the twinning density of the Cu films can reach over 80 % and exhibit a high hardness of 3.1 GPa. This study provides a concept to tailor the microstructure of the sputtered Cu films by tuning applied substrate biases and realizing the mechanism of substrate bias on the twin formation during deposition.