The invention relates to the field of stacking semiconductor circuits and techniques for making such stacks, and particularly techniques for transferring components or chips made of semiconducting materials onto a wafer.
Circuits are stacked by two types of techniques at the present time, namely techniques for making transfers from wafer-to-wafer and techniques for transferring chips onto boards.
The wafer-to-wafer transfer is technologically simpler, but it is subject to serious limitations:
The technique for transferring chips onto a wafer offers another solution, but it must use increasingly thin chips which creates other problems. The tendency to transfer increasingly thin chips is explained by the desire to:
The thinnest chips that can be treated at the moment are of the order of 50 μm thick. This thickness can be further reduced by using temporary transfer handles; a sacrificial handle is bonded onto the active face of the circuit to be thinned, the role of this handle being to act as a mechanical support for the thinned wafer (it is usually a silicon wafer). Once the passive face of the circuit to be transferred has been thinned, the chips are cut and then bonded. The next step is to remove the piece of the handle that made each chip rigid.
At the moment, there are two techniques for temporarily bonding/disassembling a handle:
Furthermore, the grinding technique used to thin boards, which in the best case introduces a thickness variation of +/−1 μm for thinning leading to thinned chip thicknesses of up to 5-10 μm, which is still not sufficient. Such a thickness variation requires super-etching of vias which limits the density and increases the cost, and limits the production and precision of subsequent planarising.
Therefore, the problem that arises is to find a new method by which components can be transferred onto a wafer, particularly in order to stack component stages.
Therefore the invention relates to a method for making a stack of at least two stages or levels of circuits, each stage comprising a substrate and at least one component, for example of the transistor type, and metallic connections formed in or on this substrate, the assembly of one of said stages, to be transferred onto a previous stage comprising:
a) ionic implantation in the substrate of said stage to be transferred through a surface of this substrate, said to be the implantation surface and through at least part of the components, so as to form a weakened zone under the components of this substrate,
b) then a formation of metallic connections of said components in this substrate between each other and/or in order to connect these components to other components, particularly one or more components in the previous stage,
c) then assemble some or part of this substrate, comprising components or groups of components, through its implantation surface onto the previous stage,
d) then a heat treatment step to thin the transferred part of said substrate by fracture at the weakened zone.
An implantation (step a) before making the metallic connections (step b) avoids the screen effect that the connections would form and also to achieve a sufficient implantation depth. It can assure a subsequent fracture by minimising the thermal budget to be applied to obtain this fracture.
According to the invention, some of the components, in the substrate of the stage or level to be transferred, are formed before the implantation step, while metallic connections in the same substrate are produced after this implantation step. Finally, this implanted substrate comprising components is transferred onto the previous stage, followed by thinning.
Implantation may be done uniformly throughout the substrate, or it may be masked. For example, it may be done to a depth of between 1.5 μm and 2.5 μm under the surface of the substrate of the stage to be transferred.
Step c) may be preceded by a substrate cutting step to individualise the part of this substrate to be transferred and assembled.
Step b) may comprise the production of a series of metallic levels, for example 7 levels, production of each of these metallic levels using a thermal budget with a temperature of about 400° C. for a duration of about 10 to 12 minutes (namely a total budget for 7 metallic levels equal to about 400° C. for 1 h 30 min), the thermal budget for the fracture in step d) being a temperature of about 450° C. for a duration of about 2 h 00. This is the case particularly for a silicon substrate and for some hydrogen implantation conditions, within a range of a few 1016 to a few 1017 ions/cm2 and advantageously between 5×1016 and 1017 ions/cm2 and preferably between 7×1016 ions/cm2 and 9×1016 ions/cm2).
The thermal budget for step b) can increase the weakening induced by implantation, corresponding to about 85% or 90% of the total thermal budget necessary to obtain the fracture along the weakened zone.
Step c) may include bonding between two SiO2/SiO2 or oxide/oxide dielectric layers, or local metal-metal bonding (metal is not present over the entire surface, and is usually only present at the connection pads).
The component(s) in the stage to be transferred and possibly also the component(s) in the previous stage may be one or more transistors, for example CMOS transistors.
The implantation step a) may then be done after planarising a dielectric that covers the substrate, but before lithography of the vias (or plugs) of transistor sources, drains and gates.
The stack to be made may comprise n stages, where n≧2; therefore, steps a)-d) may be reiterated until this stack of n stages is obtained. For example, according to one example 5≦n≦11, n=7.
In this case, a step to deposit a dielectric on the previous stage and a step to plane this dielectric before reiterating the method could be included (for example directly after step d) or later on).
One or several interconnection levels on the previous stage may also be made before reiterating the method.
Each of these steps is shown in a more detailed manner within the framework of a simple example, the chaining in
This description relates to the production of CMOS components.
In a first step (S1), a plurality of CMOS components 10, 20 each comprising a gate 12, 22, a drain and a source made by doping is made in or on a substrate 2 made of a semiconducting material, for example silicon, and a drain silicide 14, 24 and a source silicide 16, 26 respectively are then formed on top of said drain and said source (
In other words,
After planarising the dielectric 25, and before lithography of the contact pads of the sources, drains and gates, an implantation of gaseous species 29 for example hydrogen, alone or in co-implantation (step S2) with other species for example such as helium, is made (
For example, for an implantation in a silicon substrate, it is possible to choose to implant hydrogen at a dose of between 1016 or a few 1016 ions/cm2, and 1017 or a few 1017 ions/cm2, for example 5×1016 ions/cm2 and advantageously between 5×1016 ions/cm2 and 1017 ions/cm2 and preferably between 7×1016 ions/cm2 and 9×1016 ions/cm2. The implantation energy would typically be less than 300 keV, for example between 30 and 200 keV.
The result of this implantation or co-implantation is shown in
As a variant, it is possible to make a masking level to protect zones that would be sensitive to hydrogen implantation, for example to protect the gates 12, 22 of the MOSFET transistors. The technique described in document FR 2 758 907 could then be used. The result of this implantation or co-implantation is illustrated in
During the next step (step S3), “back end” steps of a method are done at low temperature, for example less than 400° C. in the case of a silicon substrate; the plugs, in other words source, drain and gate contact pads are made. The pads are made for example by lithography and etching and then by deposition of an electrically conducting layer, for example successive depositions of Ti, TiN, W or Ta, TaN, W, leading to a Ti/TiN/ or Ta/TaN/W stack. The next step is to eliminate excess deposited material (for example by chemical mechanical polishing CMP and stopping on the PMD dielectric 25).
Horizontal tracks (approximately parallel to the xy plane of the substrate) of metal connections 40 (for example Al, or AlCu, or Cu)), are also made above previously formed elements 12, 22, 14, 24, 16, 26 (
The thermal budgets then used are sufficiently limited so that they do not induce a facture into the weakened zone 30, 30i, nor a surface deformation that would reduce the quality of a subsequent assembly.
The chips thus made can then be tested and cut out (step S4): only functional chips will be selected for the subsequent assembly step.
Each selected and cut out chip is then assembled onto a host substrate, for example by bonding (step S5). This host substrate (the previous stacking stage if the method is reiterated) will not be described in detail, but it may also comprise components 101, 201 on a substrate 21, and metallic connections 401 in a dielectric layer 251 (
As a variant, if the dielectric surfaces 25, 251 are covered by metallic films (for example copper), a metal-metal (copper-copper in the example used) bonding may also be made. The article by P. Gueguen et al entitled “copper direct bonding for 3D integration”, ICTC 08 may be referred to for a description of how to make such a bonding.
One variant will also be to bond different surfaces composed of several materials together (for example oxide and copper materials), or to bond surfaces with topologies.
Any appropriate technique may be used to position chips on the host substrate by, for example so-called “Pick and Place” or self alignment techniques.
Chips may be transferred onto the host substrate chip by chip or by group of chips.
Once the chips have been put into place on the host substrate, a fracture heat treatment step (step S6) is carried out at low temperature that will fracture each chip along the weakened zone. This heat treatment may be assisted by a mechanical strain, for example by inserting a separator or using any other technique that could accelerate the fracture.
This fracture operation will preferably be carried out under the thermal budget conditions described below.
The fracture technique used is known under the term Smart Cut™ and it is described for example in the article by A. J. Auberton-Hervé et al “Why can Smart-Cut change the future of microelectronics?” published in the International Journal of High Speed Electronics and Systems, Vol. 10, No. 1 (2000), p. 131-146.
We can then (step S7) make a planarising step at the face released by the fracture. A layer 200 can be deposited, for example an oxide (
Vias 400, 400′ may then be made to establish connections between the surface 200′ and components of the host substrate onto which a transfer has just been made, or from the transferred chip or the portion of the transferred substrate (
One or several metal levels can also be made, particularly to make complementary or more complex connections.
These steps may be repeated as many time as necessary to obtain the required stacking; for example, the substrate obtained at the end of the previous step (
The numeric references used in these figures are the same as those already used above. The source 16 and the drain 14 can be seen more precisely. Reference 15 once again denotes the isolation oxide of the transistor (STI oxide). Reference 13 denotes the spacers, for example made of Si3N4.
Typically, the dielectric layer 25 (PMD), for example made of silicon oxide and/or PSG, is about 400 nm thick, the maximum thickness of the polysilicon gate 12 is about 100 nm, and the maximum thickness of the source and drain silicides is about 20 nm.
The inventors realised that the components do not form a significant screen during the implantation step and the implantation profile is not significantly disturbed despite the lack of homogeneity of zones through which the implantation is done, so that the fracture will not be modified. On the contrary, a finished CMOS circuit with all its metallic levels (5 to 11 at the moment depending on the maturity of the technologies, and typically 7) is not sufficient to make a weakening implantation through the metallic levels compatible with a fracture below the MOSFETs (typically at least 200 nm below the surface). The accumulated thickness of the different metallisation levels is then about several μm, such that implantation ions (in this case hydrogen but the same problem arises for any other element) are stopped before they have reached the silicon in the substrate 2 at a level below the MOSFET level. Therefore, a fracture in the MOSFET is impossible.
The inventors made an atomistic Monte Carlo type simulation known as SRIM, of a very high energy (250 keV) implantation in solid copper (which corresponds to the behaviour of copper in connections of various stacked levels), in order to illustrate the capacity of copper to stop hydrogen implantation; they found a value of Rp (implantation depth or “Range Project”) of the order of 2 μm under the copper surface. Thus, if a hydrogen implantation is done on a terminated CMOS wafer in which all metallisation levels are present, namely with an accumulated thickness of several microns, the hydrogen ions are stopped before they have reached the silicon.
Concerning the total thermal budget used, the inventors have been able to demonstrate that according to the invention it included a first thermal budget (in zone A in
This thermal budget range provides a means of making a fracture under conditions acceptable by the materials used with no prior bubbling. It is not strictly limited by the temperature and duration values indicated.
In these figures, curves Ib and If are the bubbling curves and fracture curves respectively for a substrate sample, as shown in
When the stiffener (added by bonding) is sufficiently effective, this mechanism induces fracture (curve If).
Bubbling and/or fracture phenomena are governed by Arrhenius laws of the following type:
1/t=A×exp(−Ea/kT),
where:
Ea and A are parameters of the Arrhenius fracture law, and Ea′ and A′ are the parameters of Arrhenius bubbling law.
Therefore these two curves are straight lines represented in a coordinate plane (1/kT, ln(1/t)), where t is the duration and T is the absolute temperature in K.
In
Curve Ib becomes closer to curve If as the implantation depth (and therefore the implantation energy) increases.
The thermal budget of the steps preceding bonding (step S5) is located in zone A so as to avoid fracture at the weakened zone and the appearance of a surface deformation incompatible with bonding.
The thermal fracture budget is located in zone B to enable fracture.
An attempt was made to identify the thermal budget of a known production method using the 65 nm technology for a stack comprising up to 7 levels of metallic connections, so as to position the points (T, t) of possible thermal budgets in the context of this invention.
The technological sequence used for each level is approximately as follows, mentioning the thermal budget, temperature and duration for each step:
By combining all these thermal budgets, it can be estimated that the equivalent thermal budget of a method according to the invention with 7 metal levels is about (400° C., 1 h 30)=(T1, t1) (it is about 400° C. for 10 to 12 minutes for each metal level). This thermal budget must not induce any surface deformation incompatible with direct bonding. Point P1 in
The maximum allowable thermal budget is imposed by the structure itself. In particular, note that a stable nickel silicide is formed at a temperature of about 450° C. This silicide is stable for ½ h at about 550° C. The stability of this silicide is increased to 650° C. for ½ h if fluoride is implanted and a small percent of platinum is added.
Furthermore, the maximum allowable thermal budget for porogens (SiOC type dielectrics) is about (450° C., 2 h).
A maximum thermal budget of (450° C., 2 h) should be respected. Point P2 in
The operating point of a method according to the invention preferably satisfies the following criteria (the notations are the same as those already introduced above):
cavity maturation condition without inducing bubbling that would be harmful to subsequent bonding, during the formation of metallic connections 40 (
The temperature and duration conditions (T1, t1), (T2, t2) mentioned above satisfy these inequalities; thus,
An example embodiment of the invention will be given, this example being illustrated in
Starting from a structure like that shown in
Heat treatment of the metallic levels (step in
An additional heat treatment after bonding with a thermal budget of the order of (450° C., 1 h 30) induces a fracture. This thermal budget is compatible with the allowable heat treatments for a CMOS structure comprising metallic levels. This second heat treatment causes complete rupture at the weakened zone, as shown by the straight line F1 in
The temperature is then brought back to its ambient value.
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