Evaluation of a novel unfluorinated copper precursor for chemical vapor deposition

A kinetics of the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of copper using novel unfluorinated precursor, copper(I)(N(1(dimethylvinylsiloxy)-1-methylethano)-2-imino-4-pentanoate), namely Cu-KI5, was studied. Since its great thermal stability, Cu-KI5 allowed high source temperature to provide high vapor pressure, for example Cu-KI5 has a vapor pressure of 0.2–2.2 Torr at the temperature range of 100–140 °C. Furthermore, copper could be deposited by direct reduction from Cu-KI5 instead of disproportionation. By using formic acid (HCOOH) as a reducing agent, copper films were deposited on ruthenium substrate at temperature range of 150–350 °C. The activation energy was 48.9 kJ/mol in surface reaction limited region (<210 °C) and 1.9 kJ/mol in diffusion limited region (>210 °C) at the total pressure of 5 Torr. Secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) analysis showed that CVD copper film of high purity (>99.99%) was deposited at 250 °C. The as-deposited copper films grown at 150–300 °C exhibited strong 〈111〉 preferred orientation. The minimum resistivity of the copper film was 1.77 μΩ cm obtained at the deposition temperature of 250 °C. In the surface reaction limited region, kinetic data extracted from experiments enabled 2-D computational simulation to predict copper deposition into trench structures. Simulation results showed excellent step coverage, which was larger than 90% for aspect ratio of 10:1. Cu-KI5 is a promising Cu-CVD precursor for the fabrication of ultra large scale integration (ULSI) or through silicon via (TSV) copper interconnects.