Atomistic simulations of deep submicron interconnect metallization

Damascene approaches are widely used for creating microelectronic interconnects. Successful implementation of the process is reliant upon the deposition of a refractory metal or metal nitride liner coating. It functions as a diffusion barrier layer to suppress transport of subsequently deposited interconnect metals into the surrounding dielectric. The development of vapor-phase processes for the deposition of uniform thickness liner layers has been problematic. Flux collimation and energetic deposition approaches have been attempted with mixed results as the feature size is decreased. Here, a modified kinetic Monte Carlo ~KMC! method has been used to explore the physical vapor deposition of liner coatings. To incorporate the many effects associated with energetic metal fluxes, the results of molecular dynamics calculations of incident atom reflection, resputtering, surface biased diffusion, and athermal relaxations have been introduced into the KMC algorithm. The method has been applied to investigate the effects of the incidence flux’s angular distribution and kinetic energy upon the liner coating coverage. It has been found that trench step coverage uniformity increases with increasing atom kinetic energy above a threshold energy value of 20 eV. Atom resputtering/reflection are found to be the most important mechanisms responsible for improvements in the step coverage. Sputtering of already deposited material is found to be the most important mechanism for transporting the flux to the most difficult to coat lower sidewall region of a trench. Energetic deposition processes that activate these mechanisms are therefore preferred. The simulations reveal the existence of an optimal incident angular distribution to maximize coverage uniformity. For a flux with a kinetic energy of 70 eV, a cosine angular distribution within the collimation angle of 615°–25° provided the best balance of direct and resputtered/reflected fluxes to maximize coating uniformity. © 2002 American Vacuum Society. @DOI: 10.1116/1.1458952#