• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.3-13
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• 1995

Electroless Ni and Cu platings were conducted on $B_4C$ and SiC. In the electroless Ni plating, the deposition rate on $B_4C$ was higher than on SiC. However, the electroless Cu deposition occured with high deposition rate regardless of the carbide substrates used in this study. Uniformity of the deposits was better in the electroless Cu deposition than in the electroless Ni deposition. In the topographies of the electroless depositions, Ni deposits have grown as colony, whereas Cu deposits have grown as fine individual grains.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.11 no.12
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• pp.1091-1098
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• 1998

Thermal stability of the electroless deposited Cu thin film was investigated. Cu/TaN/Si multilayer was fabricated by electroless-depositing Cu thin layer on TaN diffusion barrier layer which was deposited by MOCVD on the Si substrate, and was annealed in $H_2$ ambient to investigate the microstructure of Cu film with a post heat-treatment. Cu thin film with good adhesion was successfully deposited on the surface of the TaN film by electroless deposition with a proper activation treatment and solution control. Microstructural property of the electroless-deposited Cu layer was improved by a post-annealing in the reduced atmosphere of $H_2$ gas up to $600^{\circ}C$. Thermal stability of Cu/TaN/Si system was maintained up to $600^{\circ}C$ annealing temperature, but the intermediate compounds of Cu-Si were formed above $650^{\circ}C$ because Cu element passed through the TaN layer. On the other hand, thermal stability of the Cu/TaN/Si system in Ar ambient was maintained below $550^{\circ}C$ annealing temperature due to the minimal impurity of $O_2$ in Ar gas.

• Korean Chemical Engineering Research
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• v.43 no.4
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• pp.495-502
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• 2005

Copper was plated on the tungsten substrate by use of a direct copper electroless plating. The optimum deposition conditions were found to be with a concentration of $CuSO_4$ 7.615 g/L, EDTA of 10.258 g/L, and glyoxylic acid of 7 g/L, respectively. The solution temperature was maintained at $60^{\circ}C$. The pH was varied from 11.0 to 12.8. After the deposition, the properties of the copper film were investigated with X-ray diffractometer (XRD), Field emission secondary electron microscope (FESEM), Atomic force microscope (AFM), X-ray photoelectron spectroscope (XPS), and Rutherford backscattering spectroscope (RBS). The best deposition condition was founded to be the solution pH of 11.8. In the case of 10 min deposition at the pH of 11.8, the grain shape was spherical, Cu phase was pure without impurity peak ($Cu_2O$ peak), and the surface root mean square roughness was about 11 nm. The thickness of the film turned out to be 140 nm after deposition for 12 min and the deposition rate was found to be about 12 nm/min. Increase in pH induced a formation of $Cu_2O$ phase with a long rectangular grain shape. The pH control seems to play an important role for the orientation of Cu in electroless deposition. The deposited copper concentration was 99 atomic percent according to RBS. The resulting Cu/W film yielded a good adhesive strength, because Cu/W alloy forms during electroless deposition.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.52 no.4
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• pp.264-268
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• 2015

Cu films were plated in an eco-friendly electroless bath (No-Formaldehyde) on Ni/screen printed Ag pattern/PET substrate. For electroless Cu plating, we used sodium-phosphinate ($NaH_2PO_2{\cdot}H_2O$) as reducing agent instead of Formaldehyde. All processes were carried out in electroless solution of pH 7 to minimize damage to the PET substrate. According to the increase of sodium-phosphinate, the deposition rate, the granule size, and rms roughness of the electroless Cu film increased and the Ni content also increased. The electroless Cu films plated using 0.280 M and 0.575 M solutions of sodium-phosphinate were made with Cu of 94 at.% and 82 at.%, respectively, with Ni and a small amount P. All electroless Cu plated films had typical FCC crystal structures, although the amount of co-deposited Ni changed according to the variation of the sodium-phosphinate contents. From these results, we concluded that a formation of higher purity Cu film without surface damage to the PET is possible by use of sodium-phosphinate at pH 7.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2005.06a
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• pp.1507-1510
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• 2005

This study was carried out as a part of the research on the development of a maskless and electroless process for fabricating metal micro/nanostructures by using a nanoindenter and an electroless deposition technique. $2-\mu{m}-deep$ indentation tests on Ni and Cu samples were performed. The elastic recovery of the Ni and Cu was 9.30% and 9.53% of the maximum penetration depth, respectively. The hardness and the elastic modulus were 1.56 GPa and 120 GPa for Ni and 1.49 GPa and 100 GPa for Cu. The effect of single-point diamond machining conditions such as the Berkovich tip orientation (0, 45, and $90^{\circ}$) and the normal load (0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 1, 3, and 5 mN), on both the deformation behavior and the morphology of cutting traces (such as width and depth) was investigated by constant-load scratch tests. The tip orientation had a significant influence on the coefficient of friction, which varied from 0.52-0.66 for Ni and from 0.46-0.61 for Cu. The crisscross-pattern sample showed that the tip orientation strongly affects the surface quality of the machined area during scratching. A selective deposition of Cu at the pit-like defect on a p-type Si(111) surface was also investigated. Preferential deposition of the Cu occurred at the surface defect sites of silicon wafers, indicating that those defect sites act as active sites for the deposition reaction. The shape of the Cu-deposited area was almost the same as that of the residual stress field.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.23 no.8 s.185
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• pp.171-177
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• 2006

This study was performed as a part of the research on the development of a maskless and electroless process for fabricating metal micro/nanostructures by using a nanoindenter and an electroless deposition technique. $2-{\mu}m$-deep indentation tests on Ni and Cu samples were performed. The elastic recovery of the Ni and Cu was 9.30% and 9.53% of the maximum penetration depth, respectively. The hardness and the elastic modulus were 1.56 GPa and 120 GPa for Ni and 1.51 GPa and 104 GPa for Cu. The effect of single-point diamond machining conditions such as the Berkovich tip orientation (0, 45, and $90^{\circ}$ ) and the normal load (0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 1, 3, and 5 mN), on both the deformation behavior and the morphology of cutting traces (such as width and depth) was investigated by constant-load scratch tests. The tip orientation had a significant influence on the coefficient of friction, which varied from 0.52-0.66 for Ni and from 0.46- 0.61 for Cu. The crisscross-pattern sample showed that the tip orientation strongly affects the surface quality of the machined are a during scratching. A selective deposition of Cu at the pit-like defect on a p-type Si(111) surface was also investigated. Preferential deposition of the Cu occurred at the surface defect sites of silicon wafers, indicating that those defect sites act as active sites for the deposition reaction. The shape of the Cu-deposited area was almost the same as that of the residual stress field.

• 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.

• Journal of the Korean Electrochemical Society
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2017

This study investigated the effect of surface pretreatment, which removes native Cu oxides on Cu seed layer, on subsequent Cu electro-/electroless deposition in Cu interconnection. The native Cu oxides were removed by using citric acid-based solution frequently used in Cu chemical mechanical polishing process and the selective Cu oxide removal was successfully achieved by controlling the solution composition. The characterization of electro-/electrolessly deposited Cu films after the oxide removal was then performed in terms of film resistivity, surface roughness, etc. It was observed that the lowest film resistivity and surface roughness were obtained from the substrate whose native Cu oxides were selectively removed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Surface Engineering Conference
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• 2001.11a
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• pp.10-10
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• 2001

In this paper, initial depositing process of electroless Ni-Cu-P alloy was investigated by means of SEM, TEM and AES. The results show that the initial deposition is inhomogeneous and there exist different transition layers between different coatings and substrates, which are decided by the structures and compositions of the bath. For Ni-P binary alloy, its deposition takes place superiorly at grain boundary and on some grains with beneficial texture, the thickness of transition layer composed of Ni-Fe-P reaches 2000 angstrom. But during initiation of Ni-Cu-P trinary alloy, only at grain boundary is prIor to be deposited electrolessly, transited layer contains Ni-Fe-Cu-P and is decreased to about 500 angstrom. The structures of the films of Ni-P and Ni-Cu-P are crystalline at the initial depositing stage. The mechanisms of the process are put forward in this paper.

• Proceedings of the International Microelectronics And Packaging Society Conference
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• 2001.07a
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• pp.100-103
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• 2001

In this study, the adhesion and thermal property of the electroless-deposited Cu thin film were investigated. The multilayered structure of Cu/TaN/Si was fabricated by electroless-depositing the Cu thin layer on the TaN diffusion barrier which was deposited by MOCVD on the Si substrate. The thermal stability was investigated by measuring the resistivity as post-annealing temperature far the multilayered Cu/TaN/Si specimen which was annealed at Ar gas. The adhesion property of Cu 171ms was evaluated by the scratch test. The adhesion of the electroless-deposited Cu film was compared with other deposition methods of thermal evaporation and sputtering. The scratch test showed that the adhesion of electroless plated Cu film on TaN was better than those of sputtered Cu film and evaporated Cu film.