Electron fluence driven, Cu catalyzed, interface breakdown mechanism for BEOL low-k time dependent dielectric breakdown

During technology development, the study of low-k time dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB) is important for assuring robust chip reliability. It has been proposed that the fundamentals of low-k TDDB are closely correlated with the leakage conduction mechanism of low-k dielectrics. In addition, low-k breakdown could also be catalyzed by Cu migration occurring mostly at the interface between capping layer and low-k dielectrics. In this paper, we first discuss several important experimental results including leakage modulation by changing the capping layer without changing the electric field, TDDB modulation by Cu-free and liner-free interconnect builds, 3D on-flight stress-induced leakage current (SILC) measurement, and triangular voltage sweep (TVS) versus TDDB to confirm the proposed electron fluence driven, Cu catalyzed interface low-k breakdown model. Then we review several other low-k TDDB models that consider only intrinsic low-k breakdown, especially the impact damage model. Experimental attempts on validation of various dielectric reliability models are discussed. Finally, we propose that low-k breakdown seems to be controlled by a complicated competing breakdown process from both intrinsic electron fluence and extrinsic Cu migration during bias and temperature stress. It is hypothesized that the amount of Cu migration during TDDB stress strongly depends on process integration. The different roles of Cu in low-k breakdown could take different dominating effects at different voltages and temperatures. A great care must be taken in evaluating low-k dielectric TDDB as its ultimate breakdown kinetics could be strongly dependent on interconnect space, process, material, stress field, and stress temperature. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.