To achieve good step coverage for submicron contacts/vias, many approaches have been taken in recent years in VLSI production. While CVD tungsten plug is widely implemented in US for submicron manufacturing, planarized aluminum plug (i.e. high temperature aluminum deposition) is slowly emerging for its process simplicity and low wafer cost. In this paper, we will present the plasma etching studies on the high-temperature-deposited AISiCu (or hot aluminum) and its application in manufacturing of ULSICs' with O.6j.tm design rules. The etchability and manufacturability of this high temperature-deposited A1SiCu have been proven and demonstrated with submicron metal lines. Various aspects of the hot aluminum etching including profile control, residue, microloading and resist selectivity are discussed in detail.

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Selection of optimized electron beam parameters for in-line monitoring is necessary to eliminate false signals. Application of electron beam to detect electrical defects, particularly leakages, for static random access memory (SRAM) cells poses a great challenge as it requires current measurement tool with nanometer resolution to complement it. By correlating the brightness intensity or the gray-level value to the measured current values, we have shown that conductive atomic force microscopy (C-AFM) can overcome this obstacle and can be used to verify the validity of the voltage contrast (VC) captured by HMI eScan3xx Ebeam inspection tool.

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Contact and via step coverage has always been an issue for aluminium metallisation as device geometry continues to shrink. Conventional aluminium sputtering has failed to yield a reasonably good step coverage which is a potential reliability issue. Many efforts have been put in for the past years, which includes CVD tungsten, (both selective and blanket tungsten with etchback) and planarised aluminium to fill submicron contacts. The tungsten module requires additional process steps when it is to be integrated into the existing flow. Aluminium plug, on the other hand, is more attractive because of reduced process complexity and wafer cost. In this paper, we will describe each module and present a comparison between various aspects of the W-plug, Al-plug and conventional cold aluminium modules. We have demonstrated the manufacturing capability of both W-plug and Al-plug for submicron contact/via process. We have also proven the Al-plug process for Chartered's 0.6 jm contact/via technology and believe that the Al-plug process has potential for future O.5m contact/via technology.Planarised or plug contacts/vias have been studied widely and various techniques have been employed. Two major approaches are high temperature aluminium sputtering (Al-plug) and CVD (Chemical Vapour Deposition) tungsten plug. Recently, a lot of effort has been put into the Al-plug process developement as an alternative to W-plug for its simplicity in integrating the module into the existing process flow. In this paper, we shall present a comparison study between the two approaches, particularly on the process and the manufacturing aspects. We shall also discuss the electrical and reliability results. 98 ISPIE Vol. 2335 O-8194-1668-1/94/$6.OO Downloaded From: http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/ on 06/16/2016 Terms of Use: http://spiedigitallibrary.org/ss/TermsOfUse.aspx