Structural Characterization of Porous Low-K Thin Films Prepared by Different Processing Techniques Using X-Ray Porosimetry

Published

March 1, 2004

Author(s)

V. J. Lee, Christopher Soles, D W. Liu, Barry J. Bauer, Eric K. Lin, Wen-Li Wu, A Grill

Abstract

Three different types of porous low-k dielectric films, with similar dielectric constants, are characterized using X-ray porosimetry (XRP). XRP is used to extract critical structural information such as the average density, wall density, porosity, and pore size distribution. The materials include plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposited (PECVD) carbon doped oxide film composed of Si, C, O and H (SiCOH) and two spin cast silsesquioxane type films one methylsilsesquioxane film with a polymeric porogen (porous MSQ) and one hydrogensilsesquioxane film with a high boiling point solvent (porous HSQ). The porous SiCOH film displays the smallest pore sizes, while porous HSQ film has both the highest density wall material and porosity. However, the porous MSQ film exhibits a broad range of pores with the largest average pore size. We demonstrate that average pore size obtained by the well-established method of neutron scattering and X-ray reflectivity is in good agreement with the XRP results.

Citation

Journal of Applied Physics

Volume

95

Issue

No. 5

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

Local Download

Keywords

film density, porosity, porous low-k dielectric material, small-angle neutron scattering, wall der, x-ray porosimetry, x-ray reflectivity

Citation

Lee, V. , Soles, C. , Liu, D. , Bauer, B. , Lin, E. , Wu, W. and Grill, A. (2004), Structural Characterization of Porous Low-K Thin Films Prepared by Different Processing Techniques Using X-Ray Porosimetry, Journal of Applied Physics, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=852200 (Accessed October 15, 2025)