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Texture and Microstructure Evolution in Silver Thin films with FACET

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Asit Rairkar,
Jie Zhang and
Jim Adams
Asit Rairkar
Affiliation:
SEM Program, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-1704
Jie Zhang
Affiliation:
Research and Development, Cypress Semiconductor, San Jose, CA, 95134
Jim Adams
Affiliation:
SEM Program, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-1704
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Abstract

Metallic polycrystalline thin films are used in a plethora of applications, including especially metallic interconnects for the microelectronics industry. Despite the numerous approaches at modeling and simulating processing of these films, there have not been any simulation tools, which can accurately predict texture and microstructure evolution in these films. We have developed a novel 2D model called FACET for the simulation of polycrystalline thin film growth at realistic spatial and time scales. The basic idea is to use the results of smaller-scale atomic simulations (density functional theory, molecular dynamics, and lattice Monte Carlo) to provide input and guidance on the evolution of grain structure and texture on a micron scale. The feature scale model is based on describing grains in terms of two-dimensional faceted surfaces and grain boundaries. The model includes the major phenomena involved in film growth, including deposition, nucleation, surface diffusion (on the substrate and on the growing film), inter-facet diffusion, and grain growth and coarsening. In addition, the texture of each grain is treated individually, so that the texture evolution of the system can be simulated. Predictions of the FACET code are compared with previous experimental studies of texture and microstructure in Silver films.

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