Modern deposition methods for the thin metal films used in very large scale integrated diffusion barriers take advantage of nonunity sticking effects to produce more uniform coatings. Modeling these processes at the feature scale can be challenging due to long execution times which arise from the need to solve self-consistently for the transport of material in the feature. This article presents a methodology for substantially decreasing the execution time for low sticking coefficient simulations. The method is a modification of the traditional sequential Monte Carlo technique in which there is a separation of the transport processes and deposition process. This allows for a normalization of the incident flux magnitude before deposition and a substantial improvement in execution time. The article presents the incorporation of this method into a three-dimensional microstructural simulator, 3D-FILMS. The simulator is first used to confirm the accuracy of the new methodology and then assess its improvement over the more traditional algorithm. Finally, simulations for chemical vapor-deposited W and for sputtered Ti deposition are presented.
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January 2001
Research Article|
January 01 2001
Efficient modeling of thin film deposition for low sticking using a three-dimensional microstructural simulator
T. Smy;
T. Smy
Department of Electronics, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario K1S 5B6, Canada
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S. K. Dew;
S. K. Dew
Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2G7, Canada
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R. V. Joshi
R. V. Joshi
IBM, T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York 10598
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J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 19, 251–261 (2001)
Article history
Received:
July 12 2000
Citation
T. Smy, S. K. Dew, R. V. Joshi; Efficient modeling of thin film deposition for low sticking using a three-dimensional microstructural simulator. J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 1 January 2001; 19 (1): 251–261. https://doi.org/10.1116/1.1329124
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