Electromigration in Cu Damascene lines with bamboo-like grain structures, either capped with Ta/TaN, SiNx, SiCxNyHz layers, or without any cap, was investigated. A thin Ta/TaN cap on top of the Cu line surface significantly improves electromigration lifetime when compared with lines without a cap and with lines capped with SiNx or SiCxNyHz. The activation energy for electromigration increased from 0.87 eV for lines without a cap to 1.0–1.1 eV for samples with SiNx or SiCxNyHz caps and to 1.4 eV for Ta/TaN capped samples.
An in situ electromigration apparatus was used to study the kinetics of void growth in unpassivated, electropolated copper damascene lines. Voids were observed to grow by consuming grains in a stepwise fashion, either by grain thinning or by an edge displacement mechanism. Surface diffusion was found to be the primary diffusion path for void growth. In addition, grain boundaries provided a secondary path for copper diffusion in polycrystalline structures and nucleation sites for void growth in bamboo structures. Void growth rate was measured as a function of sample temperature and linewidth using a scanning electron microscope. An electromigration activation energy of 0.9Ϯ0.1 eV was determined for the copper voiding process. The effect of linewidth on void growth rate was also investigated and found to be negligible, consistent with a surface-diffusion dominated model for void growth. The in situ apparatus also made it possible to directly correlate changes in electrical resistance with physical changes taking place in the test structures.
We report x-ray microdiffraction curvature measurements of a (100)-type Si single crystal loaded in four-point bending and provide experimental verification of a procedure for differentiating between anisotropic, elastically bent beams and plates. In general usage, beam and plate components are distinguished by dimensions alone. In mechanics, however, beams and plates are differentiated based on their flexural rigidity and stress state. Since current textbooks do not provide a quantitative technique for selecting the proper constitutive equations for these two types of structures, we suggest the extension of an analysis for isotropic materials originated by Searle [G. F. C. Searle, Experimental Elasticity (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1908), pp. 40–58] and expanded on by Ashwell [D. G. Ashwell, J. R. Aeronaut. Soc. 54, 708 (1950)]. We demonstrate that, by varying the degree of bending of an anisotropic strip, a single specimen can behave as both a beam and a plate, as is predicted by this analysis.
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