• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.141-149
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• 2009

The Cu thin film material and process, which have been already used for metallization of CMOS(Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor), has been highlighted as the Cu metallization is introduced to the metallization process for giga - level memory devices. The recent progresses in the development of key elements in electrochemical processes like surface pretreatment or electrolyte composition are summarized in the paper, because the semiconductor metallization by electrochemical processes such as electrodeposition and electroless deposition controls the thickness of Cu film in a few nm scales. The technologies in electrodeposition and electroless deposition are described in the viewpoint of process compatibility between copper electrodeposition and damascene process, because a Cu metal line is fabricated from the Cu thin film. Silver metallization, which may be expected to be the next generation metallization material due to its lowest resistivity, is also introduced with its electrochemical fabrication methods.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Information and Commucation Sciences Conference
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• 2013.10a
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• pp.383-385
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• 2013

반도체소자의 고속실현을 위해서 알루미늄배선에서 40% 가량 성능을 높이는 반면 제조비용은 30%까지 낮출 수 있는 구리를 선호하고 있으나, 식각이 잘 되지 않아 원하는 패턴으로 만들어 내기가 곤란한 공정기술의 어려움과 구리물질이 지닌 유독성문제를 가지고 있다. 기존의 식각기술로는 구리패턴을 얻을 수 없는 기술적 한계 때문에 화학.기계적 연마(CMP)를 이용한 평탄화와 연마를 통해서 구리배선을 얻는 다마스커스(Damascene)기술이 개발됐고 이를 이용한 구리배선기술이 현실적으로 가능하게 됐다. CMP를 이용한 평탄화 및 연마 공정에서 Wafer에 도포된 구리의 두께를 실시간으로 측정하여 정밀하게 제어할필요가 있는데, 본 논문에서는 와전류를 이용하여 옹고스트롬 단위의 두께를 실시간으로 측정하여 제어 하는 시스템구현에 대해 기술한다.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2008.06a
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• pp.546-546
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• 2008

Copper (Cu) Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) has been an essential process for Cu wifing of DRAM and NAND flash memory beyond 45nm. Copper has been employed as ideal material for interconnect and metal line due to the low resistivity and high resistant to electro-migration. Damascene process is currently used in conjunction with CMP in the fabrication of multi-level copper interconnects for advanced logic and memory devices. Cu CMP involves removal of material by the combination of chemical and mechanical action. Chemicals in slurry aid in material removal by modifying the surface film while abrasion between the particles, pad, and the modified film facilitates mechanical removal. In our research, we emphasized on the role of chemical effect of slurry on Cu CMP, especially on the effect of amine functional group on removal rate selectivity between Cu and Tantalum-nitride (TaN) film. We investigated the two different kinds of complexing agent both with amine functional group. On the one hand, Polyacrylamide as a polymer affected the stability of abrasive, viscosity of slurry and the corrosion current of copper film especially at high concentration. At higher concentration, the aggregation of abrasive particles was suppressed by the steric effect of PAM, thus showed higher fraction of small particle distribution. It also showed a fluctuation behavior of the viscosity of slurry at high shear rate due to transformation of polymer chain. Also, because of forming thick passivation layer on the surface of Cu film, the diffusion of oxidant to the Cu surface was inhibited; therefore, the corrosion current with 0.7wt% PAM was smaller than that without PAM. the polishing rate of Cu film slightly increased up to 0.3wt%, then decreased with increasing of PAM concentration. On the contrary, the polishing rate of TaN film was strongly suppressed and saturated with increasing of PAM concentration at 0.3wt%. We also studied the electrostatic interaction between abrasive particle and Cu/TaN film with different PAM concentration. On the other hand, amino-methyl-propanol (AMP) as a single molecule does not affect the stability, rheological and corrosion behavior of the slurry as the polymer PAM. The polishing behavior of TaN film and selectivity with AMP appeared the similar trend to the slurry with PAM. The polishing behavior of Cu film with AMP, however, was quite different with that of PAM. We assume this difference was originated from different compactness of surface passivation layer on the Cu film under the same concentration due to the different molecular weight of PAM and AMP.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.45 no.5
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• pp.466-472
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• 2007

A technology platform for wafer-level three-dimensional integration circuits (3D-ICs) is presented, and that uses wafer bonding with low-k polymeric adhesives and Cu damascene inter-wafer interconnects. In this work, one of such technical platforms is explained and characterized using a test vehicle of inter-wafer 3D via-chain structures. Electrical and mechanical characterizations of the structure are performed using continuously connected 3D via-chains. Evaluation results of the wafer bonding, which is a necessary process for stacking the wafers and uses low-k dielectrics as polymeric adhesive, are also presented through the wafer bonding between a glass wafer and a silicon wafer. After wafer bonding, three evaluations are conducted; (1) the fraction of bonded area is measured through the optical inspection, (2) the qualitative bond strength test to inspect the separation of the bonded wafers is taken by a razor blade, and (3) the quantitative bond strength is measured by a four point bending. To date, benzocyclobutene (BCB), $Flare^{TM}$, methylsilsesquioxane (MSSQ) and parylene-N were considered as bonding adhesives. Of the candidates, BCB and $Flare^{TM}$ were determined as adhesives after screening tests. By comparing BCB and $Flare^{TM}$, it was deduced that BCB is better as a baseline adhesive. It was because although wafer pairs bonded using $Flare^{TM}$ has a higher bond strength than those using BCB, wafer pairs bonded using BCB is still higher than that at the interface between Cu and porous low-k interlevel dielectrics (ILD), indicating almost 100% of bonded area routinely.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.79-85
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• 2015

RC delay is a critical issue for achieving high performance of ULSI devices. In order to minimize the RC delay time, we uses the CMP process to introduce high-conductivity Cu and low-k materials on the damascene. The low-k materials are generally soft and fragile, resulting in structure collapse during the conventional high-pressure CMP process. One troubleshooting method is electrochemical mechanical polishing (ECMP) which has the advantages of high removal rate, and low polishing pressure, resulting in a well-polished surface because of high removal rate, low polishing pressure, and well-polished surface, due to the electrochemical acceleration of the copper dissolution. This study analyzes an electrochemical state (active, passive, transpassive state) on a potentiodynamic curve using a three-electrode cell consisting of a working electrode (WE), counter electrode (CE), and reference electrode (RE) in a potentiostat to verify an electrochemical removal mechanism. This study also tries to find optimum conditions for ECMP through experimentation. Furthermore, during the low-pressure ECMP process, we investigate the effect of current density on surface roughness and removal rate through anodic oxidation, dissolution, and reaction with a chelating agent. In addition, according to the Faraday’s law, as the current density increases, the amount of oxidized and dissolved copper increases. Finally, we confirm that the surface roughness improves with polishing time, and the current decreases in this process.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.377-377
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• 2012

Microprocessor technology now relies on copper for most of its electrical interconnections. Because of the high diffusivity of copper, Atomic layer deposition (ALD) $TaN_x$ is used as a diffusion barrier to prevent copper diffusion into the Si or $SiO_2$. Another problem with copper is that it has weak adhesion to most materials. Strong adhesion to copper is an essential characteristic for the new barrier layer because copper films prepared by electroplating peel off easily in the damascene process. Thus adhesion-enhancing layer of cobalt is placed between the $TaN_x$ and the copper. Because, cobalt has strong adhesion to the copper layer and possible seedless electro-plating of copper. Until now, metal film has generally been deposited by physical vapor deposition. However, one draw-back of this method is poor step coverage in applications of ultralarge-scale integration metallization technology. Metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) is a good approach to address this problem. In addition, the MOCVD method has several advantages, such as conformal coverage, uniform deposition over large substrate areas and less substrate damage. For this reasons, cobalt films have been studied using MOCVD and various metal-organic precursors. In this study, we used $C_{12}H_{10}O_6(Co)_2$ (dicobalt hexacarbonyl tert-butylacetylene, CCTBA) as a cobalt precursor because of its high vapor pressure and volatility, a liquid state and its excellent thermal stability under normal conditions. Furthermore, the cobalt film was also deposited at various $H_2/NH_3$ gas ratio(1, 1:1,2,6,8) producing pure cobalt thin films with excellent conformality. Compared to MOCVD cobalt using $H_2$ gas as a reactant, the cobalt thin film deposited by MOCVD using $H_2$ with $NH_3$ showed a low roughness, a low resistivity, and a low carbon impurity. It was found that Co/$TaN_x$ film can achieve a low resistivity of $90{\mu}{\Omega}-cm$, a low root-mean-square roughness of 0.97 nm at a growth temperature of $150^{\circ}C$ and a low carbon impurity of 4~6% carbon concentration.