Tantalum nitride thin film resistors for integration into copper metallization based RF-CMOS and BiCMOS technology platforms

Abstract

Metal thin film resistors have been integrated into a damascene-copper multilayer metallization system for mixed-signal BiCMOS technology platforms. The thin film process can be adjusted to achieve resistors with very low temperature coefficients, high linearity, low noise, and improved matching as compared to resistors based on implanted silicon or polysilicon processing. In addition, improvements good RF performance was observed.

On-chip offset generator for A/D converter INL testing without an accurate test stimulus

“…3, but unfortunately the voltage coefficients of integrated polysilicon resistors are much higher [10]. Some fabrication processes include thin film resistor options which have voltage coefficients less than 10 ppm/V [11], but we used high ohmic poly resistors in this case.…”

Novel low-cost wideband Si-based submount for 40 Gb/s optoelectronic devices

“…In the case of an EA modulator, a shunt resistor has to be included at the end of the CPW structure for impedance matching. In this work, a TaN thin-film resistor is adopted for its high thermal stableness and radio-frequency (RF) impedance stableness [9,10]. To ensure low microwave-power reflection from the EA modulator, the resistance of the terminal resistor should be close to 50⍀, Figure 4 shows the typical reflection characteristics of the thin-film resistor terminated CPW structure formed on the Si-based submount.…”

Design and evaluation of an integrated thin film resistor matching test structure

“…They (can) have more favorable sheet-resistances, lower temperature coefficients, better voltage linearity, and lower parasitic capacitances than diffused resistors, while due to their micro crystalline structure, the matching properties of these metallic TFRs should be considerably better than those of poly silicon resistors [1,2]. Scarce (published) quantitative performance results [1, 3,4] indicate however that the matching performance of TFRs does not easily meet this last expectation. Mismatch fluctuation standard deviations often do not follow the common lIv'(area) relation while there are no apparent physical indications that the theoretical Central Limit Theorem requirements underlying such behavior [5] cannot be met for these device architectures.…”