The Impact of Anneal on Electromigration of Copper Interconnect and the Optimized Anneal Technology Study

Abstract

The theoretical and experimental work is executed for study the impact of anneal on the grain size, electromigration (EM) reliability of copper (Cu) interconnect system, and subsequently find the optimized anneal condition. EM accelerated failure tests are carried on the Cu interconnect samples with 0.2μm line width, which are produced at different anneal conditions. It is shown that anneal can lead the grains to grow to become larger, and lessen the EM diffuse path. As a result, the EM diffuse active energy (Ea) of Cu interconnect is enhanced, and the ability against the EM of Cu interconnect is improved. By comparing the EM character of Cu interconnects produced at different anneal conditions, results can be obtained as below: the anneal time should be maintained 40 minutes at least in order to achieve fully anneal and excellent ability against the EM; the anneal temperature should be set about 350°C approximately, because high temperature (beyond 400°C) anneal can induce the other reliability issues, which will have a strong negative impact on the EM reliability. The results in this paper are significance for Cu interconnect technology optimize and are beneficial to improve the EM reliability of the Cu interconnect system.