Research on the oxidation behavior of Titanium nitride thin films and resistance simulation

In the preparation of advanced integrated circuits, titanium nitride (TiN) film can be used as a metal hard mask layer, barrier layer and metal gate work function layer. The resistance (RS) varied as queuing time (Q-time) changed, which caused the difficulty to evaluate the true value especially under extremely thin film. The oxidation behavior of this film in clean room environment was studied in the paper. Film component bond and its ratio were explored with XPS. Experiment shows that RS increases logarithmically with the increase of Q-time. What is more, the simulated standard RS (RS
s
) also correlate to initially measured RS (RS
m
). After the simulation formula applied in data collection system, a precise monitor has been achieved and the monitor time significantly improved from 5 hours to 1 hours, 80% efficiency benefit is achieved.