Characteristics of sputtered Ta–B–N thin films as diffusion barriers between copper and silicon

Ta–B–N thin films were prepared by rf-magnetron sputtering from a TaB2 target in N2/Ar reactive gas mixtures and then used as diffusion barriers between Cu and Si substrates. In order to investigate the performance of Cu/Ta–B–N/Si contact systems, X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), four-point probe measurement, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (XTEM), and Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) depth profile were used. Results of this study indicate that the barrier characteristics are significantly affected by the nitrogen content. In addition, the failure mechanism for the Cu/Ta–B–N/Si contact systems is also discussed herein.