Impact of moisture on porous low-k reliability

In this paper, the impact of moisture on the reliability of porous low-k materials has been investigated. It was found that moisture uptake is more serious for more porous SiOC low-k materials and its presence inside the low-k has a strong impact on dielectric reliability. It has been demonstrated that by eliminating moisture, the leakage current can be significantly decreased and in addition higher breakdown electric fields and longer dielectric lifetimes can be achieved. Therefore, integration of porous low-k materials requires a maximum of attention to prevent moisture uptake at each step during integration and in addition the passivation layers need to be perfectly hermetic in order to maintain good dielectric reliability