Controlled changes in the Cs+ primary ion beam density and analytical expressions describing the sources (bulk concentration, memory effect, and adsorption of N from the residual vacuum) of secondary ion mass spectrometry analyte secondary ion intensities were used to determine the contributions to the N secondary ion intensity obtained during the analysis of trace levels of N in bulk SiC. This methodology allows the determination of N concentrations that can be substantially less than the apparent N secondary ion background intensity. It was shown that for the Cameca IMS-6F instrumental conditions used, memory effect is the main contributor to the N background signal. Taking into consideration the Cs+ beam diameter, the raster size, the diameter of the ion-extracted area, and the impurity secondary ion intensity, an optimized combination of primary ion beam current and raster size was determined that resulted in the best detection limit for N in bulk SiC. This detection limit for N in bulk SiC (∼6×1014 atoms/cm3) was obtained for a primary ion current of 100 nA, a raster size of 45 μm×45 μm, and a secondary ion extraction area diameter of 30 μm.
Secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) backside analyses have been performed on a Cu/TaN/Ta/SiO2/Si structure to determine barrier effectiveness for Cu diffusion. Sample backside access to the barrier layers was obtained by removal of the Si substrate using a polishing method that maintains parallelism between the sample surface and the polished back side by monitoring changes in facets at the four corners of the specimen. Determination of the Si thickness remaining during the polishing process was improved through the use of optical interference measurements using a narrow band pass optical filter. Samples having slopes with respect to the original surface less than 6 nm over 60 μm have been obtained. A difference in polishing rate between SiO2 and Si was exploited to obtain this parallelism. For SIMS analyses, the presence of a SiO2 layer required electron gun charge neutralization for the O2+ 0.5 keV impact energy analysis. SIMS analyses show the ability to distinguish all layers and to monitor copper through the barrier material. With the high depth resolution conditions used, SIMS analyses were able to provide detailed elemental distribution information such as the presence of nitrogen at specific interfaces.
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