Designing particles out of the deposition process-titanium nitride films

A reactive sputtering process for deposition of high-quality TiN films was demonstrated. Continuous process/hardware improvement has enabled achievement of a robust TiN production process in VLSI manufacturing. The source of the particles produced during reactive sputtering has been identified. Analysis of the results indicates that the particles are produced at the target surface and are a strong function of the process parameters. By optimizing the process parameters the particle density on the TiN films has been reduced by a factor of 16, from a previous average of >2.3 particles/cm/sup 2/ to >