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Articles you may be interested inInfluence of stoichiometry of direct plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposited SiN x films and silicon substrate surface roughness on surface passivation J. Appl. Phys. 97, 063303 (2005); 10.1063/1.1861138 Nanocomposite low-k SiCOH films by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition using vinyltrimethylsilane and C O 2 A versatile substrate heater for thermal and plasma-enhanced chemical-vapor deposition Rev.Plasma-enhanced chemical-vapor deposition tetraethylorthosilicate ͑TEOS͒ films are extensively used as the interlayer dielectric films in multilevel interconnection processes. When TEOS oxide films were deposited on metal patterns three different substrates, titanium nitride ͑TiN͒, aluminum ͑Al͒, and oxide (SiO 2 ), were used. This study examines the dependence of these substrates on TEOS step coverage. The deposition rates of TEOS oxide revealed that the SiO 2 substrate lead to highest TEOS deposition rate during the initial deposition period of 5 s. Then, the TEOS deposition rate of the substrates was nearly the same. The TiN substrate exhibited the highest sidewall step coverage but the sidewall step coverage of the Al substrate deteriorated due to its granular surface. Additionally, different substrates exhibited different coverage of the bottom step. Moreover, the bottom step coverage exceeded the sidewall coverage for all substrates.

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Shallow trench isolation (STI) is extensively used as the isolation method beyond 0.18 μm generation. This study explored the formation of circular defects in high-density plasma (HDP) STI deposition. Circular defects were caused by the burst flow of silane reactive gas. The defect maps were coincident with the silane flow field. Fourier transform infrared and secondary-ion-mass spectroscopy data exhibited that the silane-burst flow formed a silicon rich oxide (SRO) film. This SRO film existed between the STI oxide and liner oxide. The circular defects were easily found using optical microscopy (OM) for STI with SRO film. Scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy photographs show that these defects include bubbles and concavities. When SRO fully covers the liner oxide, bubbles easily form by delamination between SRO film and liner oxide. This correlates with the high tensile stress produced by the SRO film. Besides this, higher STI deposition temperatures yield more bubbles. When SRO discontinuously forms on the liner oxide, the concavities were induced by the variation of STI deposition rate on SRO film and liner oxide. The surface charge difference between the SRO film and the liner oxide is the driving force for the generation of concavities.