The dual damascene process is generally adopted in semiconductor fabrication when feature size is scaled down and technology node moves to submicron. In the dual damascene process, copper is generally used as conductive material for interconnection. Other conductive materials include tungsten, titanium, titanium nitride. Accordingly, silicon oxide, fluorinated silica glass, or low dielectric constant (k) materials are used for inter-level dielectric (ILD). Chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) processing is implemented to etch back and globally planarize wafer surface. CMP involves both mechanical grinding and chemical etching in the material removal process. However, because the removal rate of metal and dielectric materials are usually different, polishing selectivity leads to undesirable dishing and erosion effects. Dishing occurs when the copper recedes below or protrudes above the level of the adjacent dielectric. Erosion is a localized thinning of the dielectric.
Dishing and erosion are sensitive to pattern structure and pattern density. Dummy metal features are designed and incorporated into damascene structure to make pattern density more uniform to improve the planarization process.
Other processes using CMP also suffer from similar problems. For example, shallow trench isolation (STI) uses CMP to etch back and form a global planarized profile. Over-etching is typically performed to ensure a complete etch of the silicon oxide on silicon nitride. Surface variations associated with local pattern and pattern density may be eliminated by the use of dummy features such as dummy active features in STI trench.
Dummy features formed by current methods may enhance pattern spatial signature but may not effectively compensate step height variation.
Aspects of the present disclosure are best understood from the following detailed description when read with the accompanying figures. It is emphasized that, in accordance with the standard practice in the industry, various features are not drawn to scale. In fact, the dimensions of the various features may be arbitrarily increased or reduced for clarity of discussion.
It is to be understood that the following disclosure provides many different embodiments, or examples, for implementing different features of various embodiments. Specific examples of components and arrangements are described below to simplify the present disclosure. These are, of course, merely examples and are not intended to be limiting. In addition, the present disclosure may repeat reference numerals and/or letters in the various examples. This repetition is for the purpose of simplicity and clarity and does not in itself dictate a relationship between the various embodiments and/or configurations discussed. Moreover, the formation of a first feature over or on a second feature in the description that follows may include embodiments in which the first and second features are formed in direct contact, and may also include embodiments in which additional features may be formed interposing the first and second features, such that the first and second features may not be in direct contact.
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The semiconductor devices 120, 140, 160, and 180 may further include electric circuits and semiconductor substrate. The electric circuits may include metal oxide semiconductor filed effect transistors (MOSFET), bipolar transistors, diodes, memory cells, resistors, capacitors, inductors, high voltage transistors, sensors, or combinations thereof. The semiconductor substrate may comprise an elementary semiconductor (such as crystal silicon, polycrystalline silicon, amorphous silicon and germanium), a compound semiconductor (such as silicon carbide and gallium arsenic), an alloy semiconductor (such as silicon germanium, gallium arsenide phosphide, aluminum indium arsenide, aluminum gallium arsenide and gallium indium phosphide) and/or combinations thereof. The semiconductor substrate may be a semiconductor on insulator, such as silicon on insulator (SOI), having a buried oxide (BOX) structure. In other examples, compound semiconductor substrate may include a multiple silicon structure, or the silicon substrate may include a multilayer compound semiconductor structure.
Dishing and erosion may also result from forming an isolation structure such as shallow trench isolation (STI) by CMP. Such STI, for example, may be formed by dry etching a trench in a substrate and filling the trench with insulator materials such as silicon oxide, low k materials, or combinations thereof. Silicon nitride may be used as an etch stop layer (ESL) to protect active areas between STI regions. The filled trench may have multi-layer structure such as a thermal oxide liner layer plus silicon oxide by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) or low k material. When CMP processing is used to etch back and planarize the semiconductor surface, polishing selectivity, between silicon oxide and silicon nitride, may cause dishing.
Both dishing and erosion effects are related to pattern density. To eliminate dishing and erosion in planarization processing including CMP processing in STI formation and CMP processing in interconnection formation, dummy feature may be used to improve pattern density and reduce deviations from a flat profile.
Similarly, dummy features may also be used in forming STI isolation structures for better planarization effect. In one embodiment, dummy active regions may be formed in isolation or in a dummy-available region to improve uniformity of the pattern for better planarization in CMP process. In following description, focus will be on dummy structure and method to fabricate the same in multilayer interconnection. However, the spirit and the method of the present disclosure can be extended to dummy feature insertion in STI structure to enhance planarization.
In particular, dummy features 540 have irregular instead of predefined shape. The irregular dummy features 540 may have different shape, size, and thickness. The method of designing irregular dummy features can be referred to as model-based irregular dummy feature insertion. The model-based irregular dummy feature insertion uses irregular features and also allows local density and insertion location to vary for better uniformity, less parasitic resistance and capacitance, and less step height variation. Furthermore, the irregular dummy feature insertion method may generate irregular dummy features for insertion in a random manner. The irregular dummy feature insertion method may also use random placement including random location and random orientation of the dummy features. Such irregular dummy features with random generation and random placement is operable to reduce or eliminate pattern spatial signature and parasitic resistance/capacitance, reduce step height variation, and enhance planarization.
More generally, the irregular dummy feature may be constructed of metal or other conductive materials used in multilayer interconnection. The conductive material may include copper, tungsten, titanium, titanium nitride, or combinations thereof. The irregular dummy feature may also be a dummy active feature used in STI. The dummy active feature may comprise silicon, polysilicon, silicon oxide, and silicon nitride. The irregular dummy features may have a multiple layer structure for compatibility with functional features and better planarization effect.
An expression
is defined as an objective function. Minimizing the objective function under a certain condition may be used to determine dummy feature density:
The minimization condition in Equation (4) states that the total pattern density of each partition, Fij, cannot be greater than the pattern density upper limit, Uij. The pattern density upper limit may be determined in a method shown in
Based on thus determined dummy feature pattern density, an irregular dummy feature may be adopted. A candidate dummy feature may include all dummy features illustrated in
The method 800 begins at step 810 by defining process specification. In one embodiment for interconnection planarization, processing specification may include the specification of metal material, metal line dimension, ILD dielectric materials, flatness variation tolerance, CMP processing parameters such as polishing pad hardness, pad type, polishing slurry formula, polishing pressure, rotation speed, polishing rate, and polishing selectivity.
The method 800 proceeds to step 820 in which a characterization test vehicle (“test vehicle”) is designed to collect dummy insertion data and calibrate the effect of irregular dummy feature insertion. A test vehicle is a semiconductor pattern specifically designed for certain tests and experiments. A test vehicle may consist a set of electrical reference test structures which are next to metal structures including as-designed metal lines compatible with the new technology and dummy features of different combinations of shapes, size, thickness, location, and orientation. In one embodiment, a Kelvin resistor is adopted as an electrical reference test structure because Kelvin resistors may provide higher electrical measurement accuracy. In designing a test vehicle, metal lines of various dimensions and densities may be included in the pattern structure in the test vehicle. The test vehicle may include various predefined features and patterns such as those described in
In step 830, the test vehicle designed in step 820 is used to simulate the polishing process. Test data is collected, which includes polishing rate, polishing selectivity, surface level variation, and relationship between polishing results (including polishing rate and surface level variation) and pattern structures including pattern density. In one embodiment, the collected data may be used to determine the average window size, k, or/and pattern density upper limit, Uij. Pattern density has a universal maximum limit for a given technology. For example, metal density may not be more than 75%. However, for a given as-designed metal pattern, available space for dummy metal insertion may be much less. So each tile may have a local pattern density upper limit associated with local as-designed pattern structure and pattern density. Step 830 may determine the pattern density upper limit through simulation and calculation. Such pattern density upper limit may be used in dummy feature tiling. In step 830, the objective function defined in Equation (4) may be calculated using different average window size and extracted pattern density upper limit. Collected data in step 830 may also include resistance and capacitance data of the test vehicle that reveal the parasitic resistance and capacitance added to the as-designed structure. The evaluation of polishing result and parasitic resistance/capacitance from the test vehicle may be compared with the calculated objective function to verify if they are in agreement and if the objective function is well constructed and effective.
In step 840, some criteria are used to evaluate above the test, simulation, and calculation to determine whether the average window size is in agreement with the process specification defined in step 810. Furthermore, if the calculated objective function is in agreement with data collected from CMP processing and the test structure of the test vehicle. If either one or both of the questions have a negative answer, execution returns to the step 830. Otherwise, the method proceeds to step 850.
In step 850, pattern density upper limit and objective function determined in step 840 are recorded for each given pattern structure. These recorded data may be used for dummy feature insertion for a new product, which will be described in method 900 provided in
The method 800 proceeds to step 860 in which a process simulation tool is built according to the recorded data including the average window size, k, pattern density upper limit, Uij, and parasitic resistance/capacitance. The process simulation tool may include process specification, constructed objective function, irregular dummy feature database, and an irregular dummy feature generator. The process simulation tool may be used for irregular dummy feature tiling, polishing processing design, and polishing control.
The method 900 begins at step 910 by extracting a density matrix. The semiconductor wafer surface area is partitioned into M×N partitions. The partition is based on simulation and collected data in the method 800. As-designed pattern density, Dij, can be extracted from the as-designed pattern structure for the new product. The extraction may be implemented by process simulation tool.
The method 900 proceeds step 920, in which process simulation is optimized. The process simulation needs input of simulation parameters including average window size, k, pattern density upper limit, and generator to produce an irregular dummy feature. The input information may be available from implementation of the method 800 for the given technology associated with the new product. Some parameters may need to be modified and optimized according to the information of the density matrix and/or other information of the new product.
In step 930, dummy features are generated through simulation and added to the as-designed pattern according to process simulation and a certain algorithm defined through equation (1) to (4). Dummy features may be optimized through minimization of the objective function under the condition that total final density, Fij, of each partition may not be larger than the pattern density upper limit of the partition. The pool of dummy features are irregular dummy features of different shape, size, thickness, location, and orientation illustrated in
In step 940, in one embodiment, the objective function is evaluated to determine if minimization is achieved. If the objective function is not minimized and the planarization may not meet specification, then the method 900 returns to step 930 and repeats the same process until the objective function is well below the values of the objective function with other irregular dummy features and the objective function is minimized. Alternatively, a numerical value may be used as a criteria to evaluate if an objective function is minimized.
In step 950, the designed dummy feature is incorporated into the final product and recorded into design file and photomask tapeout file for photomask implementation and production fabrication.
Referring to
The integrated circuit device 1100 also includes interconnects 1120 extending along and/or through one or more dielectric layers 1130. The dielectric layer 1130 may comprise silicon dioxide, FSG, Black Diamond® (a product of Applied Materials of Santa Clara, Calif.), Xerogel, Aerogel, amorphous fluorinated carbon, Parylene, BCB, Flare, and SiLK, and/or other materials, and may be formed by CVD, ALD, PVD, spin-on coating and/or other processes. The interconnects 1120 may comprise copper, tungsten, titanium, titanium nitride, gold, aluminum, carbon nano-tubes, carbon fullerenes, refractory metals, alloys of these materials and/or other materials, and may be formed by CVD, PVD, plating and/or other processes. The interconnects 1120 may also include more than one layer. For example, each interconnect 1120 may comprise an adhesion layer possibly comprising titanium, titanium nitride, tantalum or tantalum nitride, a barrier layer possibly comprising titanium nitride or tantalum nitride, and a bulk conductive layer comprising copper, tungsten, aluminum, or aluminum alloy. The interconnect 1120 may further include at least one irregular dummy feature 1140, wherein the irregular dummy feature 1140 is inserted into inter-level dielectric 1130 according to disclosed method and is not electrically connected to underlying functional circuit. The irregular dummy feature may use the same materials and processing as these of the interconnect 1120.
The semiconductor substrate 1110 may be a semiconductor on insulator, such as SOI, having a BOX structure. In other examples, compound semiconductor substrate may include a multiple silicon structure, or the silicon substrate may include a multilayer compound semiconductor structure. The semiconductor substrate 1110 may include a plurality of isolation trench structures 1150 between active region for isolation. Furthermore, a dummy active feature 1160 may be formed in isolation region to improve pattern uniformity for better polishing processing. The dummy active feature may have irregular shape. The dummy active feature 1160 may include silicon or polysilicon. The dummy active feature 1160 may further include a pad oxide layer and silicon nitride layer which are substantially removed after polishing processing. Alternatives to silicon nitride may include silicon oxynitride and silicon carbide. The irregular dummy features 1140 and 1160 may have random shape, random size, random thickness, random location, and random orientation. The random shape may include a square, a rectangle, a rectangular array, a broken stripe, a dotted stripe, a circle, a triangle, polygon, and a cross.
Thus, the present disclosure introduces a semiconductor device including, in one embodiment, an irregular dummy feature located in inter-level dielectric. The irregular dummy feature may have random shape, size, thickness, location, orientation, or combination thereof. In another embodiment, semiconductor device constructed may comprise an dummy active feature located in isolation region.
The present disclosure also introduces a method of designing irregular dummy feature. In one embodiment, the method includes optimization flow for dummy insertion infrastructure. In another embodiment, the method includes dummy insertion optimization flow for a new product chip using existing fabrication technology.
An integrated circuit device is also provided in the present disclosure. In one embodiment, the integrated circuit device includes a plurality of semiconductor devices including at least one irregular dummy feature located in an inter-level dielectric. In another embodiment, the integrated circuit device includes at least one irregular dummy active feature located in isolation region in substrate.
Irregular dummy feature may have multi-level structure compatible with multilevel interconnection structure to enhance metal pattern density uniformity.
The foregoing has outlined features of several embodiments so that those skilled in the art may better understand the detailed description that follows. Those skilled in the art should appreciate that they may readily use the present disclosure as a basis for designing or modifying other processes and structures for carrying out the same purposes and/or achieving the same advantages of the embodiments introduced herein. Those skilled in the art should also realize that such equivalent constructions do not depart from the spirit and scope of the present disclosure, and that they may make various changes, substitutions and alterations herein without departing from the spirit and scope of the present disclosure.
This application is related to, and claims priority of, U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/555,174 filed on Mar. 22, 2004.
Number | Date | Country | |
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60555174 | Mar 2004 | US |