Hot wire chemical vapor processing (HWCVP) - A prospective tool for VLSI

Today the Very Large Scale Industry (VLSI) is looking towards process solutions, which will avoid the problems associated with the conventional or presently employed technologies. This demand has become more intense with the VLSI industry extending their horizons towards Micro electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) based devices and Application-Specific Integrated Circuits ASICs). The areas of concern are development of high-k dielectric thin films, highly conducting polysilicon thin films, ultra thin diffusion barriers on low dielectric constant layers with electromigration resistant metal interconnects. Over the last few years, work carried out on the hot wire chemical vapor process (HWCVP) has shown that, this technique has great potential to yield the desired materials at low processing temperatures. This paper discusses the results we have obtained in the above areas and also the extension of application of this technique to areas like MEMS and ASICs.