EPE analysis of sub-N10 BEoL flow with and without fully self-aligned via using Coventor SEMulator3D

Joern-Holger Franke; Matt Gallagher; Gayle Murdoch; Sandip Halder; Aurelie Juncker; William Clark

doi:10.1117/12.2258195

28 March 2017 EPE analysis of sub-N10 BEoL flow with and without fully self-aligned via using Coventor SEMulator3D

Joern-Holger Franke, Matt Gallagher, Gayle Murdoch, Sandip Halder, Aurelie Juncker, William Clark

Proceedings Volume 10145, Metrology, Inspection, and Process Control for Microlithography XXXI; 1014529 (2017) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2258195
Event: SPIE Advanced Lithography, 2017, San Jose, California, United States

Abstract

During the last few decades, the semiconductor industry has been able to scale device performance up while driving costs down. What started off as simple geometrical scaling, driven mostly by advances in lithography, has recently been accompanied by advances in processing techniques and in device architectures. The trend to combine efforts using process technology and lithography is expected to intensify, as further scaling becomes ever more difficult. One promising component of future nodes are “scaling boosters”, i.e. processing techniques that enable further scaling. An indispensable component in developing these ever more complex processing techniques is semiconductor process modeling software. Visualization of complex 3D structures in SEMulator3D, along with budget analysis on film thicknesses, CD and etch budgets, allow process integrators to compare flows before any physical wafers are run. Hundreds of “virtual” wafers allow comparison of different processing approaches, along with EUV or DUV patterning options for defined layers and different overlay schemes. This “virtual fabrication” technology produces massively parallel process variation studies that would be highly time-consuming or expensive in experiment. Here, we focus on one particular scaling booster, the fully self-aligned via (FSAV). We compare metal-via-metal (mevia-me) chains with self-aligned and fully-self-aligned via’s using a calibrated model for imec’s N7 BEoL flow. To model overall variability, 3D Monte Carlo modeling of as many variability sources as possible is critical. We use Coventor SEMulator3D to extract minimum me-me distances and contact areas and show how fully self-aligned vias allow a better me-via distance control and tighter via-me contact area variability compared with the standard self-aligned via (SAV) approach.

Citation Download Citation

Joern-Holger Franke, Matt Gallagher, Gayle Murdoch, Sandip Halder, Aurelie Juncker, and William Clark "EPE analysis of sub-N10 BEoL flow with and without fully self-aligned via using Coventor SEMulator3D", Proc. SPIE 10145, Metrology, Inspection, and Process Control for Microlithography XXXI, 1014529 (28 March 2017); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2258195

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