Semiconductor Interconnection Patterns with Air Gaps and Barrier Layers
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Solution Overview
Problem
Highly integrated semiconductor devices face reliability issues due to increased manufacturing complexity and power consumption, requiring improved interconnection patterns and manufacturing methods to enhance performance and durability.
Innovation Solution
The semiconductor device design includes interconnection patterns with specific metal and barrier layers, such as titanium-aluminum compounds, and an air gap structure to reduce stress migration and leakage current, along with a manufacturing method involving thermal treatment and patterning processes to form these patterns.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Productivity
If semiconductor devices are highly integrated to achieve small size and multi-function, then productivity and functionality are improved, but reliability deteriorates due to increased manufacturing complexity and stress migration
Solution Approach 1:
The interconnection pattern is divided into multiple metal layers (first metal pattern, second metal pattern) separated by barrier patterns. This segmentation reduces stress concentration in each individual layer and prevents stress migration across the entire interconnection structure, thereby maintaining reliability while supporting high integration.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent uses composite interconnection structures combining different metal materials (e.g., copper, aluminum, tungsten) with barrier materials (e.g., titanium nitride, tantalum nitride). Each material is selected for specific properties: copper for low resistance, barrier materials for stress prevention and diffusion blocking. This composite approach optimizes both electrical performance and reliability in highly integrated devices.
2Use of energy by moving object
If interconnection patterns are made thinner to reduce power consumption, then use of energy is improved, but manufacturing precision becomes more difficult to control
Solution Approach 1:
The patent optimizes the thickness parameters of each metal layer and barrier layer within specific ranges. By carefully controlling these parameters (e.g., barrier layer thickness of 50-200 Å, metal layer thickness ratios), the design achieves low power consumption while remaining within manufacturable precision limits. The multi-layer structure allows distributed thickness control rather than requiring extreme precision in a single thin layer.
Solution Approach 2:
Barrier patterns serve as intermediary layers between metal patterns, providing a buffer that relaxes manufacturing precision requirements. The barrier layers compensate for variations in metal layer thickness and prevent direct interaction between adjacent metal layers, allowing greater tolerance in thickness control while maintaining electrical performance and preventing short circuits.
3Reliability
If barrier patterns are made thicker to prevent hydrogen and fluorine ion diffusion, then reliability is improved, but manufacturing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
Barrier patterns are strategically placed only at critical interfaces where hydrogen and fluorine ion diffusion is most likely to occur (e.g., between metal layers, at contact interfaces). The thickness and material composition of barrier layers are optimized locally based on the specific diffusion risks at each interface, rather than uniformly increasing barrier thickness throughout the entire structure. This localized approach prevents diffusion while minimizing manufacturing complexity.
Applied Scientific Principles
This section explains which scientific principles are used to turn an abstract innovation direction into a practical engineering solution.
Function Achieved in This Case
This approach results in semiconductor devices with improved reliability by reducing hydrogen and fluorine ion diffusion, minimizing leakage current, and preventing metal migration, thereby enhancing the overall performance and durability of semiconductor devices.
Implementation Method 1
performing a thermal treating process on the second metal layer, the second barrier layer, the first metal layer and the first barrier layer such that the titanium in the second barrier layer is combined with the aluminum in the first and second metal layers, thereby converting the second barrier layer into a thermally treated second barrier layer including a titanium-aluminum (Ti—Al) compound layer
Data Source
AI summary
A semiconductor device may include a first interlayer dielectric layer including a plurality of contacts, a plurality of interconnection patterns disposed on the first interlayer dielectric layer and connected to the contacts, respectively, and a second interlayer dielectric layer disposed on the first interlayer dielectric layer and covering the interconnection patterns. Each of the interconnection patterns may include a first metal pattern, a second metal pattern disposed on the first metal pattern, a first barrier pattern between the contact and the first metal pattern, and a second barrier pattern between the first metal pattern and the second metal pattern. The second metal pattern may expose a portion of a top surface of the second barrier pattern, and the second interlayer dielectric layer may include an air gap between the interconnection patterns adjacent to each other.