Advances in Engineering Advances in Engineering features breaking research judged by Advances in Engineering advisory team to be of key importance in the Engineering field. Papers are selected from over 10,000 published each week from most peer reviewed journals.
Appl. Phys. Lett. 102, 221909 (2013).
Emil H. Zin, W. H. Bang, E. Todd Ryan, Sean W. King, Choong-Un Kim.
Materials Science and Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas 76019, USA and
GLOBALFOUNDRIES, 257 Fuller Road, Albany, New York 12203, USA and
Logic Technology Development, Intel Corporation, 5200 NE Elam Young Parkway, Oregon 97124, USA.
Abstract
This letter reports experimental observations evidencing the viscoplasticity of porous organosilicate glass thin films under conditions pertinent to their application in advanced low-k/Cu interconnect technology. Specifically, it is found that porous SiCOH thin films exhibit a significant level of viscoplasticity with a rate sensitive to the porosity, the degree of plasma damage, and hydration reaction when tested using a ball indenter at 150–400 °C. The activation energy of the viscosity (1.25–1.45 eV) is measured to be far lower than the bulk glass (>4 eV), suggesting that the viscous flow is affected by the presence of defective bond-network such as Si–OH or Si–H bonds.
© 2013 AIP Publishing LLC
