Effect of bake/cure temperature of an advanced organic ultra low-k material on the interface adhesion strength to metal barriers

Abstract

The interface adhesion strength of an advanced polymeric low-k material to different metal barriers was quantitatively measured using the four-point bending technique. Different sample configurations were tested in order to find the optimal configuration to study the polymer/barrier interface adhesion strength. The asymmetrical sample configuration with the notch at the film stack side was found to be the most suitable approach to study the adhesion strength of this interface. The effect of bake/cure temperature on the adhesion strength between polymer and barrier was investigated in more detail. Higher cure temperatures resulted in a lower amount of triple C-bonds in the polymer and lower polymer/barrier interface adhesion strength, while no differences in optical and mechanical properties were observed. Moreover, it was found that higher amount of Ta–C bonds formed at the interface improved the polymer/barrier interface adhesion, thereby suggesting that the chemical interaction between the polymer and metal barrier plays a major role in the adhesion performance.

Intrinsic effect of porosity on mechanical and fracture properties of nanoporous ultralow-k dielectrics

“…The 4PB test specimens were fabricated following the same procedure as described in Ref. 17. The 4PB tests were performed on a high precision micromechanical test system from DTS Company (Dauskardt Technical Services) using an applied displacement rate of 0.5 lm/s.…”

Delamination in BEOL: Analysis of interface failure by combined experimental & modeling approaches

“…Moreover, the interface between 2 materials is dependent on the processing method as reported by different authors [7,8]. As an illustration, [8] shows that G c increases for a TaNTapolymerM interface as an effect of an increase in sputter bias, inducing an increasing number of Ta-C bonds at the interface (Fig. 1).…”

Effect of 4-point bending test procedure on crack propagation in thin film stacks

“…The 4PB test is a powerful, commonly used technique to quantitatively measure G c and is therefore suitable to study the effect of a wide range of factors, such as effect of cure/bake temperature [2], on thin film adhesion. A high precision micro-mechanical test system (DTS Company) was used to perform 4PB tests using sandwiched beam specimens containing the films of interest.…”

“…1 and Table 1. After this, the samples were diced into rectangular pieces of sizes 60 Â 5 mm 2 and centrally notched [2]. During 4PB testing, at certain maximum load (peak load), a crack is initiated at the notch and propagates into specific location in the film stack.…”