David Gerald Farber

Differences in erosion mechanism and selectivity between Ti and TiN in fluorocarbon plasmas for dielectric etch

Metallic masking materials are promising candidates for plasma-based pattern transfer into low-k materials for fabricating integrated circuits. Improving etching selectivity (ES) between the low-k and hardmask material requires a fundamental understanding of material erosion in fluorocarbon (FC) plasmas. The authors have previously reported on the erosion mechanism and plasma parametric dependencies of Ti etch in FC discharges. The present work focuses on elucidating differences in the erosion behavior between Ti and TiN hardmasks. The authors studied erosion of Ti, TiN, and organosilicate glass (OSG), a reference low-k material, in CF4/Ar and C4F8/Ar plasmas. Changes in surface composition, FC surface reaction layer thicknesses, erosion rates, and corresponding ES were established by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and in situ ellipsometry. The authors found that the erosion stages and plasma parameter dependent surface compositions were similar for Ti and TiN. The previously established dependence of T...

Study of Ti etching and selectivity mechanism in fluorocarbon plasmas for dielectric etch

The authors studied the behavior of Ti hardmasks in CF4/Ar and C4F8/Ar discharges using conditions relevant to pattern transfer processes into organosilicate glass (OSG), a reference low-k material investigated in parallel. The authors examined various material erosion stages and determined the dependencies of etch rates (ERs) and etching selectivities (ESs) on the following plasma parameters: self-bias voltage (50–150 V), processing pressure (20–60 mTorr) and %CF4 (10–30 %) in CF4/Ar discharges, and O2 addition (0–10 %) and N2 addition (0–20 %) to C4F8/Ar discharges. Erosion behavior and ERs were characterized by real-time ellipsometric measurements and multilayer optical modeling. These measurements were complemented by x ray photoelectron spectroscopy to study the surface composition. The impact of plasma parameter changes were investigated by comparing ERs and corresponding ESs (OSG ER/Ti ER). During the erosion of Ti, the initially oxidized film surface was transformed into a TiFx layer (x ∼ 3) cover...