Still acknowledged as a peculiarly challenging module, the Dual Damascene (DD) in via-first approach is constantly the object of an improvement effort, through many ways: I) testing new materials, II) tuning the coating/baking recipes and III) varying the scanner illumination conditions. The extensive characterization involved, in this case, a KrF 4-layer stack, in which the under-layer gained the role of both vias-filler and flattening material, thanks to the evaluation of many parameters like the introduction of a multi-bake route and the variation of the film thickness. The stack, customized to guarantee the etch feasibility, implied: the usage of a hard mask to allow the digging selectivity, a Bottom-Anti-Reflective-Coating (BARC) to avoid any back-reflection coming from the Silicon oxide substrate and the PhotoResist (PhR) on top. Evaluating different illumination modes, this study demonstrated how the tuning of the Numerical Aperture (NA) and of the σ values can be a feasible solution to decrease the swing effect entity; being it responsible, in most cases, for large dimensional variations when encountering small film thickness intra-die biases. Process Window (PW) and Depth of Focus (DoF) were analyzed thanks to the usage of properly designed test vehicles, to check the definition of the expected structural dimensions. This gave the opportunity to improve the Critical Dimension Uniformity (CDU), always remaining a key topic, especially when dealing with devices addressed to the automotive market.
In the field of semiconductor manufacturing, there is still a continuous search for techniques to improve the Critical Dimension Uniformity (CDU) across the wafer. CDU improvement and general defectiveness reduction increase the industrial yield and guarantee high reliability standards. In the KrF Dual-Damascene module integration, at a lithographic level, deep trench planarization is mandatory to minimize interference patterns of the photoresist known as the swing curve effect. Swing curve models explain why small changes in the film thickness of the photosensitive material can create wide critical dimensions changes. Different approaches have been developed to improve the CDU, like the etch-back approach and partial via filling. Within the plethora of materials studied to improve the performances, the Marangoni-effect based underlayers are now showing their potential. In the past, an extensive testing of a double-layer solution comprising one Marangoni-effect-based material and one standard underlayer has been carried out with success. Despite this, double-layer spinning brings drawbacks at manufacturing level, increasing the cost and limiting the tools’ throughput. A new solution, resulting from the chemical tuning of the material exploiting the Marangoni effect has brought to the synthesis of a new single-layer planarization material, with properties similar to the previously tested double-layer approach. This advanced material opens the pathway to an alternative and cost-effective way to solve the issues typical of this module integration.
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