Electromigration Reliability of Barrierless Ruthenium and Molybdenum for Sub-10 nm Interconnection

Abstract

Cu interconnects suffer from increased resistance and poor reliability at a sub-10 nm width. Ru and Mo have been highlighted recently as the next interconnection material candidate due to their various advantages over Cu; they have lower resistance than Cu at sub-10 nm, do not diffuse into SiO2, and are etchable. Here, we evaluated the electromigration (EM) reliability of Ru and Mo to confirm their feasibility for the next-generation interconnection. The activation energy for EM failure is calculated by measuring the mean time to failure (MTTF) of film and wire structures while factoring in temperature increases with thermal coefficient of resistance (TCR) measurements. In addition, we investigate the EM properties in terms of resistivity-increasing parameters that originate from geometry and additional fabrication processes. Furthermore, we evaluate the EM performance in terms of electrochemical potential. Our findings confirm the feasibility of Ru as a promising candidate for next-generation interconnection applications, providing enhanced reliability compared to conventional Cu interconnects.