Development of a planarized Al-Si contact filling technology

A sputter deposition method for Al-Si thin films onto a TiN/Ti coated substrate at a raised temperature has been developed, and their properties have been studied. The films were deposited by a conventional DC magnetron sputtering apparatus without any substrate bias voltage. When the temperature of the substrate was kept at a temperature between 500 degrees C and 550 degrees C, the contact holes were fully filled with Al-Si and the cross-sectional view including SiO/sub 2/ planarization was very smooth. In this case, no degradations in both the contact resistances and the leakage currents across the junctions were observed. This technology has been proven to be suitable for submicron multilevel interconnections.<
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