A study of blister formation in ALD Al2O3 grown on silicon

Author

Vermang, Bart ; Goverde, Hans ; Simons, Veerle ; De Wolf, Ingrid ; Meersschaut, Johan ; Tanaka, Shuji ; John, Joachim ; Poortmans, Jef ; Mertens, Robert

Author_Institution

Imec, Heverlee, Belgium

fYear

2012

fDate

3-8 June 2012

Abstract

This work investigates the formation of blisters during annealing an Al₂O₃ film grown by atomic layer deposition (ALD) on Si. This blistering phenomenon is shown to occur under an external load in the presence of a tensile residual stress: the total membrane stress is a super-imposition of the residual stress of the pre-stressed film and a concomitant stress due to change of blister profile. In the case of this Si/Al₂O₃ system, the film is indeed pre-stressed and the hydrostatic pressure is caused by (i) the effusion of H₂ and H₂O and (ii) Al₂O₃ being a diffusion barrier.

Keywords

aluminium compounds; annealing; atomic layer deposition; diffusion barriers; elemental semiconductors; internal stresses; silicon; thin films; Si-Al₂O₃; annealing; atomic layer deposition; blister formation; concomitant stress; diffusion barrier; effusion; hydrostatic pressure; pre-stressed thin film; silicon; tensile residual stress; total membrane stress; Aluminum oxide; Annealing; Atomic layer deposition; Films; Silicon; Stress; Water;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference (PVSC), 2012 38th IEEE

Conference_Location

Austin, TX

ISSN

0160-8371

Print_ISBN

978-1-4673-0064-3

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.2012.6317802

Filename

6317802