Journal of the Electrochemical Society, Vol.145, No.12, 4327-4332, 1998
Very low pressure selective aluminum chemical vapor deposition using dimethylaluminum hydride without H-2 carrier gas
Very low pressure aluminum chemical vapor deposition (Al CVD) using only dimethylaluminum hydride (DMAH) as a source gas has been examined and the resultant growth chemistry and Al film properties have been compared with those resulting from the use of conventional DMAH-H-2 gas supply systems. DMAH is supplied without H-2 carrier gas by vaporizing liquid DMAH just before Al CVD and film deposition progresses efficiently at a DMAH pressure of 0.9-2.2 mTorr. Because the addition of H-2 gas to DMAH does not increase the deposition rate, the reaction leading to Al growth seems to be due to the thermal decomposition of DMAH rather than to hydrogen reduction. At temperatures lower than 340 degrees C, deposition is governed by the rate of a surface reaction with an activation energy of about 0.4 eV. The surface morphology, crystallinity, and step coverage of films grown without H-2 gas are almost the same as those of films grown with a conventional DMAH-H-2 gas system. The carbon concentration in the films deposited using only DMAH is slightly lower than that of those using DMAH-H-2. In the application of this new deposition process to LSI interconnections, via holes only 0.15 mu m in diam are filled by selective Al CVD and the via resistance is found to be only 3 Omega. Very low pressure selective Al CVD is shown to be a promising technique for making the interconnects of the 0.1 mu m generation of ultralarge-scale integrated circuits.