Sintering Fabrication and Characterizations of Powder Metallurgy Targets for Integrated Circuits

Many refractory metal and alloy films are used in Integrate Circuits processing for varied applications, such as plug, barrier layer, glue layer, gate layer, bond-pad, and etc. Usually these films are deposited from powder metallurgy (PM) targets including tungsten, tungsten titanium alloy, molybdenum, silicide alloy, chromium, ruthenium, and etc. On one hand, sintering fabrication methods for these targets, such as atmospheric pressure sintering, Hot Pressing (HP), Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP) and Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS), are presented in this paper. And the influence of sintering methods on the target’s performance is also discussed. On another hand, the characterizations of powder metallurgy targets are also discussed, such as purity, density, grain size, grain orientation, and uniformity.