Effect of Superfilling and Leveling Inhibitors in Hybrid Additives on the Microstructure Evolution of Electroplated Copper Interconnect Films during Self-Annealing

Abstract As the feature size shrinks, the main challenge for copper interconnect electroplating is to minimize interconnect resistance while ensuring the void-free feature filling, which is realized by the interaction of additives during electroplating. Among additives, hybrids are considered suitable for damascene filling because they combine type-I (superfilling) and type-II (leveling) inhibitors. However, it is generally believed that the more inhibitory an additive is, the more impurities it introduces into the films, thereby hindering grain growth during self-annealing, which paradoxically limits the conductivity of copper interconnects. To balance the inhibition of hybrid additives with their ability to introduce impurities, the effect of hybrid additives on the microstructure evolution of the films during self-annealing is explored in terms of texture, grain size, and impurity density, which are considered to determine the conductivity of copper films. We find that the {111} texture increases as the percentage of type-I inhibitors increases, whose relative texture coefficient reaches 97% after self-annealing due to the adsorption of hybrid additives on non-<111>-oriented crystal planes. Additionally, the impurity content and grain size increase as type-I inhibition increases, and so does the film conductivity after self-annealing, due to the possible promotion from impurities to the grain growth.