Implementation of low-dielectric-constant materials for ULSI circuit performance improvement

As device geometries and operating voltage continue to decrease while functional density increases, it is imperative to reduce the RC time delay. The new embedded polymer structures improves the interconnect performance through line-to-line capacitance reduction by using polymer only between tightly spaced lines. The gapfill polymeric materials do not degrade the electromigration performance of standard multilayered TiN-Al-TiN interconnects. This scheme alleviates many of the integration and reliability problems associated with polymers, and can be easily adopted into a standard production process.