Application Of The SPV‐based Surface Lifetime Technique To In‐Line Monitoring Of Surface Cu Contamination Free

Implementation of Cu interconnects into Silicon Integrated Circuits (IC’s) has been instrumental in the continuing improvement of IC device performance. Copper as a well known Gate Oxide Integrity (GOI) killer [1, 2] requires extensive protocols to minimize the possibility of cross contamination. Despite such protocols the risk for cross contamination exists, and consequently there is the need for in‐line Cu cross‐contamination detection metrology. Preferably the metrology will be non‐destructive, fast, and capable of mapping on product wafers. Up to now the most common approaches for monitoring Cu contamination in IC fabrication lines either measure Cu in the bulk Si, which is not applicable to Cu cross‐contamination monitoring because Back‐End‐of‐the‐Line thermal budgets restrict the ability to diffuse the surface Cu into the bulk Si; or the techniques are not optimal for in‐line monitoring due to their destructive, time‐consuming, or costly nature. In this work we demonstrate for the first time the application of the ac‐Surface Photo Voltage (ac‐SPV) surface lifetime approach [3] to in‐line, full wafer coverage mapping of low level (<1E9 cm‐2) surface Cu contamination. The low level sensitivity is achieved through integration of a novel preferential surface Cu activation procedure into a production ready metrology system. Furthermore, because the metrology is non‐contact (utilizing edge‐grip handling) and non‐destructive, it is directly applicable to measurement of production wafers. In‐line fab data acquired using this metrology is presented and compared to data from Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectroscopy (ICP‐MS).