1. Introduction and overview 2. Film stress and substrate curvature 3. Stress in anisotropic and patterned films 4. Delamination and fracture 5. Film buckling, bulging and peeling 6. Dislocation formation in epitaxial systems 7. Dislocation interactions and strain relaxation 8. Equilibrium and stability of surfaces 9. The role of stress in mass transport.

Thin Film Materials: Stress, Defect Formation and Surface Evolution

Today, the price of building a factory to produce submicron size electronic devices on 300 mm Si wafers is over billions of dollars. In processing a 300 mm Si wafer, over half of the production cost comes from fabricating the very-large-scale-integration of the interconnect metallization. The most serious and persistent reliability problem in interconnect metallization is electromigration. In the past 40 years, the microelectronic industry has used Al as the on-chip conductor. Due to miniaturization, however, a better conductor is needed in terms of resistance–capacitance delay, electromigration resistance, and cost of production. The industry has turned to Cu as the on-chip conductor, so the question of electromigration in Cu metallization must be examined. On the basis of what we have learned from the use of Al in devices, we review here what is current with respect to electromigration in Cu. In addition, the system of interconnects on an advanced device includes flip chip solder joints, which now tend ...

Recent advances on electromigration in very-large-scale-integration of interconnects

One of the simplest ways to measure the mechanical properties of a thin film is to deform it on a very small scale. Because indentation testing with a sharp indenter is one convenient means to accomplish this, nanoindentation, or indentation testing at the nanometer scale, has become one of the most widely used techniques for measuring the mechanical properties of thin films. Other reasons for the popularity of nanoindentation stem from the ease with which a wide variety of mechanical properties can be measured without removing the film from its substrate and the ability to probe a surface at numerous points and spatially map its mechanical properties. The utility of the mapping capability is illustrated in Figure 1, which shows several small indentations made at selected points in a microelectronic device. The hardness and modulus of the device were determined at each point. In addition to microelectronics, nanoindentation has also proved useful in the study of optical coatings, hard coatings, and materials with surfaces modified by ion implantation and laser treatment.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0883769400041634

Measurement of thin film mechanical properties using nanoindentation

Electromigration is an important concern in very large scale integrated circuits. In narrow, confined metal interconnects used at the chip level, the electromigration flux is resisted by the evolution of mechanical stresses in the interconnects. Solutions for the differential equation governing the evolution of back stresses are presented for several representative cases, and the solutions are discussed in the light of experimental as well as theoretical developments from the literature.

Stress evolution due to electromigration in confined metal lines

Solder reactions between SnPb and one of the four metals, Cu, Ni, Au, and Pd have been reviewed on the basis of the available data of morphology, thermodynamics, and kinetics. The reactions on both bulk and thin film forms of these metals have been considered and compared. Also the two kinds of reactions, above and below the melting point of the solder, have been considered and compared. The rate of intermetallic compound formation in wetting reactions between the molten solder and the metals is three to four orders of magnitude faster than those between the solid state solder and the metals. The rate is controlled by the morphology of intermetallic compound formation. In the wetting reaction between molten SnPb and Cu or Ni, the intermetallic compound formation has a scallop-type morphology, but in solid state aging, it has a layer-type morphology. There are channels between the scallops, which allow rapid diffusion and rapid rate of compound formation. In the layer-type morphology, the compound layer itself becomes a diffusion barrier to slow down the reaction. Similar morphological changes occur between SnPb and Au or Pd. The stability of scallop-type morphology in wetting reaction and layer-type morphology in solid state aging have been explained by minimization of surface and interfacial energies. The unusually high rate of scallop-type intermetallic compound formation has been explained by the gain of rate of free energy change rather than free energy change. Also included in the review is the use of a stack of thin films as under-bump-metallization, such as Cr/Cu/Au, Al/Ni(V)/Cu, and Cu/Ni alloyed thin films.

Tin–lead (SnPb) solder reaction in flip chip technology

During the solidification of solder joints composed of near-eutectic Sn–Ag–Cu alloys, the Sn phase grows rapidly with a dendritic growth morphology, characterized by copious branching. Notwithstanding the complicated Sn growth topology, the Sn phase demonstrates single crystallographic orientations over large regions. Typical solder ball grid array joints, 900 μm in diameter, are composed of 1 to perhaps 12 different Sn crystallographic domains (Sn grains). When such solder joints are submitted to cyclic thermomechanical strains, the solder joint fatigue process is characterized by the recrystallization of the Sn phase in the higher deformation regions with the production of a much smaller grain size. Grain boundary sliding and diffusion in these recrystallized regions then leads to extensive grain boundary damage and results in fatigue crack initiation and growth along the recrystallized Sn grain boundaries.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0884291400093729

The microstructure of Sn in near-eutectic Sn-Ag-Cu alloy solder joints and its role in thermomechanical fatigue

Thermal stress‐induced voiding in narrow aluminum‐based metallizations used as interconnects in microelectronic circuits has recently become a serious reliability concern. Room‐temperature stress relaxation and associated physical phenomena in passivated and unpassivated aluminum‐based metallizations, subsequent to exposure to high temperatures, are analyzed based both on theoretically estimated and experimentally determined thermal stresses. It is shown that stress relaxation at longer times involves mainly dislocation climb, while short‐term relaxation during cool down from higher temperatures, and immediately thereafter, involves significant dislocation glide. Void growth, frequently observed in passivated metallizations, provides a new source of atoms to feed stress relaxation by the same processes as in the absence of voiding.

Mechanisms of thermal stress relaxation and stress‐induced voiding in narrow aluminum‐based metallizations

Stress relaxation in aluminum films of several thicknesses was characterized by using both continuous indentation and x-ray diffraction techniques. Results of the indentation and x-ray stress measurements compare closely for films of small thicknesses. Indentation data from thicker films do not compare well to the x-ray data due to the presence of a residual stress distribution.

Residual stress measurements of thin aluminum metallizations by continuous indentation and x-ray stress measurement techniques

Probability distributions are evaluated for electromigration induced open failures in narrow, passivated interconnects with a near‐bamboo grain structure. Void formation is initiated at the cathode ends of the polycrystalline line segments or ‘‘grain clusters.’’ If these clusters are longer than a critical size Lc, they can accommodate enough atoms for voids to reach the critical size to fail the line. Obviously, the critical size Lc depends on the thermal stress: a cluster under a tensile stress is able to incorporate more atoms from the void than an unstressed cluster. In the case the clusters are shorter than Lc, atoms from the voids must be distributed also to bamboo sections, outside the clusters, in order for the voids to induce open failures. Based on this physical picture, failure probabilities are evaluated as a function of time. The predicted failure distributions and parametric dependencies compare well with the experiments.

Matt A. Korhonen

Papers

Stress evolution due to electromigration in confined metal lines

The microstructure of Sn in near-eutectic Sn-Ag-Cu alloy solder joints and its role in thermomechanical fatigue

Mechanisms of thermal stress relaxation and stress‐induced voiding in narrow aluminum‐based metallizations

Residual stress measurements of thin aluminum metallizations by continuous indentation and x-ray stress measurement techniques

Microstructure based statistical model of electromigration damage in confined line metallizations in the presence of thermally induced stresses