Method for conductive film quality evaluation
AssigneeTaiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd.
InventorsHsien-Ping Feng, Min-Yuan Cheng, Hsi-Kuei Cheng, Steven Lin, Huang-Yi Huang, Yuh-Da Fan
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method for monitoring copper film quality and for evaluating the annealing efficiency of a copper annealing process includes measuring hardness of a copper film formed on a substrate before and after annealing and comparing the hardness measurement results. The measurements can be correlated to grain boundary saturation levels, copper grain sizes and therefore conductivity. Hardness measurements may be taken at a plurality of locations throughout the substrate to account for variations in the copper film grain structure.
Claims20
A method for evaluating copper film quality comprising:
- forming a cooper film on a substrate;
- measuring hardness of said copper film;
- annealing said copper film to produce an annealed copper film;
- further measuring annealed hardness of said annealed copper film;
- and
- evaluating conductivity of said annealed copper film based on said annealed hardness.
A method for evaluating copper film quality comprising:
- forming a copper film on a semiconductor substrate;
- measuring film hardness of said copper film;
- and
- evaluating conductivity of said copper film based on said measuring.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.