Post Porosity Plasma Protection applied to a wide range of ultra low-k materials

Integration challenges of porous ultra low-k (ULK) materials resulting from the ULKs' high sensitivity to process damage constitute a major roadblock to their implementation in back-end-of-the-line wiring structures for advanced technology nodes. The Post Porosity Plasma Protection strategy, which we introduced last year, enables to shield the ULKs' porosity during key integration steps. We report here on the feasibility of the protection across a wider range of dielectric constants and the advantages offered by our strategy during integration in terms of critical dimension integrity and electrical properties.