Steven K. Dew

Fabrication of thin films with highly porous microstructures

An evaporation process has been developed for depositing highly porous insulator or metal films with densities as low as 15% of bulk. The process utilizes either multiple evaporation sources or substrate movement to provide a symmetrical but very oblique (≳80%) flux incident on the substrate. Extreme self‐shadowing produced a vertical columnar microstructure consisting of isolated and evenly spaced columns including a unique zigzag structure in a number of insulator films. Features of the film are often anisotropic, leading to conductivity differences of as much as a factor of two along perpendicular axes in the plane of the film surface. The direction of anisotropic growth was observed to switch orientation as the incident flux angle was increased to very oblique, beyond approximately 80°. A line segment simulator incorporating ballistic deposition and minimization of chemical potential has been used to aid in the understanding of the growth mechanisms of these films and to optimize the evaporation proce...

Self-shadowing and surface diffusion effects in obliquely deposited thin films

The production of highly porous films by oblique deposition has attracted recent attention because of the possible applications of such films. The morphology of obliquely evaporated films is thought to be determined mainly by the mechanisms of self-shadowing and surface diffusion. The thin film process simulator GROFILMS has been used to verify the importance of these effects, and clarify some aspects of how they interact to determine the final film morphology. Good agreement between simulations and actual films has been achieved. Temperature control of the film during deposition is shown to be an important consideration for the production of structurally engineered films.

Three-dimensional simulation of film microstructure produced by glancing angle deposition

A novel three-dimensional (3D) ballistic deposition simulator 3D-FILMS has been developed for the modeling of thin film deposition and structure. The simulator features a ballistic transport algorithm to model incident species with angular distributions appropriate to physical vapor deposition systems. Two-tiered data structuring is employed in order to enable the simulator to run using memory resources available to workstations. The simulator has been applied to a unique class of thin films grown by the technique of glancing angle deposition (GLAD). These films exhibit low bulk density due to an internal structure consisting of isolated microcolumns, which can be engineered into a variety of 3D forms. Because of their inherent 3D morphology, created by a combination of complex substrate motion and 3D shadowing, GLAD films represent an ideal test subject for 3D simulation. Scanning electron microscope images of films are presented together with simulation results, which correctly reproduce aspects of colu...

Step Coverage, Uniformity and Composition Studies Using Integrated Vapour Transport and Film-Deposition Models

A Monte Carlo sputter flux transport model has been developed for efficient generation of angular, energy, and thickness uniformity distributions for application to integrated circuit metallization films. The model allows for arbitrary target erosion profiles and emission angular distributions and uses an energy-dependent gas-scattering model. Verification of the model using aluminum and copper pinhole images has been obtained. The resulting sputter distribution information can be input into a topography-level film-deposition model to provide step coverage and microstructure depictions. The combination of these two models has been used to examine metallization issues such as film thickness uniformity, step coverage, compositional variations in alloy films, and magnetron source design.

Fundamentals of Electron Beam Exposure and Development

Electron Beam Lithography (EBL) is a fundamental technique of nanofabrication, allowing not only the direct writing of structures down to sub-10 nm dimensions, but also enabling high volume nanoscale patterning technologies such as (DUV and EUV) optical lithography and nanoimprint lithography through the formation of masks and templates. This chapter summarizes the key principles of EBL and explores some of the complex interactions between relevant parameters and their effects on the quality of the resulting lithographic structures. The use of low energy exposure and cold development is discussed, along with their impacts on processing windows. Applications of EBL are explored for the fabrication of very small isolated bridge structures and for high density master masks for nanoimprint lithography. Strategies for using both positive and negative tone resists are explored.

Simulation of the spatial distribution and molecular weight of polymethylmethacrylate fragments in electron beam lithography exposures

We report a three-dimensional (3D) simulation model based on the kinetic transport theory for calculating the distribution of PMMA fragments after an exposure to electron impact. The conditions employed for the modeling were chosen to resemble a typical electron beam lithography exposure. The model accounts for inelastic collisions of electrons in PMMA and resulting random main-chain scissions. We have considered gratings composed of parallel lines distanced by 10–50nm and exposed to electrons with energies of 10–60keV. By the model simulations, we have generated and analyzed the detailed 3D distributions of small PMMA fragments (one to ten monomers) that are soluble at the development stage and thus are responsible for the clearance in the gratings. In terms of the spatial distributions of soluble fragments, we have formulated the criteria that define the total clearance as well as the local grating development and investigated their dependence on the grating period, electron dose, and energy.

Experimental study and computer simulation of collimated sputtering of titanium thin films over topographical features

An experimental study and computer simulation of collimated sputtering of titanium (Ti) thin films onto submicrometer trenches is presented. The effect of square grid collimators with aspect ratios varying from 0.5 to 2 has been studied. Simulation of collimated sputtering involves the combination of the simulation of sputter distributions vapor transport model and the simulation by ballistic deposition film growth model. This combination is able to simulate the effect of collimation on the spatial and angular distributions of deposited atoms, and is able to predict the film coverage, deposition rate change, and microstructure of the deposited films. Both experimental and simulation results show that bottom coverage in trenches of aspect ratio 1.2 can be significantly improved from 50% to more than 80% using collimation. However, a penalty is paid by a corresponding decrease in deposition rate down to 15% of the uncollimated value. Additionally, the microstructure (grain size and orientation) is altered b...

Theoretical and experimental determination of the energy flux during magnetron sputter deposition onto an unbiased substrate

The energy flux onto an unbiased substrate is determined theoretically and experimentally for aluminum and copper deposited using a 3 in. magnetron sputtering system. The energy per deposited atom is calculated. Energy per deposited atom trends towards being independent of power and pressure, especially at high magnetron powers. At low powers, the energy per deposited atom increases with pressure due to lower deposition rates. For the magnetron system used, plasma effects are shown to be important in determining the total energy flux to the substrate. Contributions of the electrons and thermal radiation from the target region are included in the model.

Simulation of the microstructure of chemical vapor deposited refractory thin films

A ballistic deposition model (SIMBAD) has been extended to provide qualitative cross‐sectional depictions of the microstructure present in chemical vapor deposited (CVD) films. The model qualitatively depicts the pronounced columnar structure typical of refractory metal, nitride, and silicide films−especially when deposited over integrated circuit topography. The important factors affecting thin film microstructure are seen to be flux shadowing, precursor surface diffusion, and a nonunity sticking coefficient. While the conformal step coverage typical of refractory CVD films is primarily due to a low sticking coefficient, the detailed columnar structure is the result of all three of these mechanisms. The angular distribution of the incident precursor flux is important to the shadowing mechanism, and a sticking coefficient‐dependent angular distribution relevant to CVD is presented. Variations of the model to represent selective deposition (including selectivity loss) are also shown.

A 3D thermal simulation tool for integrated devices-Atar

This paper presents a novel three-dimensional (3D) thermal simulation tool for semiconductor integrated devices. The simulator is used to automatically generate an accurate 3D physical model of the device to be simulated from layout information. The simulator produces an appropriate mesh of the device based on a rectangular block structure. The mesh is automatically created such that a fine mesh is produced around heat generation regions, but a moderate number of blocks are used for the entire device. This paper first confirms that the simulator produces an accurate solution to the nonlinear differential equation describing the heat flow. Then model generation from three example technologies (silicon trench, GaAs mesa structures, silicon on insulator) is presented. The potential of the simulator to quickly and easily explore the effect of layout and process variations is illustrated, with the simulation of a two-transistor GaAs power cell as a large example. The program incorporates a transient solver based on a transmission line matrix (TLM) implementation using a physical extraction of a resistance and capacitance network. The formulation allows for temperature dependent material parameters and a nonuniform time stepping. An example of a full transient solution of heat flow in a realistic Si trench device is presented.