As the device shrunk to 100 nm, the CVD TiN barrier filling would be limited by the process window of contact for both step coverage and plasma treatment. This limitation not only affects the step coverage capability but also poses a challenge to the treatment of the organic film with the small contact hole. In this study, we investigated whether the plasma treatment of the TiN film barrier influences the subsequent tungsten deposition and causes the change of the gapfilling behavior. After the different RF plasma treatment, we found that the resistivity and impurity level of the thin TiN film can influence not only the contact resistance and uniformity, but also the product yield. The over-treatment contacts were found with porous voids in the poor tungsten deposition during the contact filling even after CMP polishing. The resistances of under-treatment contacts would be determined by the impurity level of TiN films. Hence, the optimized TiN deposition and treatment would be critical to the contact resistance and yield performance. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.