Selective electroless deposition of cobalt using amino-terminated SAMs

The continuation of CMOS scaling leads to the necessity of replacing Cu as an interconnect material with a metal with lower resistivity and better reliability performance. At the same time, significant technological improvements are required to mitigate the pattern overlay requirements when forming multilevel structures with a half-pitch below 10 nm. Area-selective deposition (ASD) offers an elegant way to enable self-alignment of multilevel structures. However, defectivity is a typical bottleneck of ASD integration. This work explores the selective electroless deposition (ELD) of Co as a replacement of Cu as an interconnect metal. The selective metallization process is promoted by the selective placement of an amino-terminated organic layer in combination with confined grafting of a Pd catalyst. Co films thicker than 40 nm can be formed on amino-terminated surfaces, while the surfaces with no amino functionality remain completely free of Pd and Co according to EDS chemical analysis and SEM inspection. This article offers a detailed study of selective Co growth on blanket and patterned structures and investigation of the ELD Co film properties, such as low-temperature recrystallization at 420 °C, grain structure, chemical composition and segregation of impurities. It is demonstrated that the resistivity of the ELD Co films exhibits lower thickness dependence when compared to that of PVD Co, which can be attributed to the ELD Co grain size exceeding the Co film thickness. In addition, it is shown that the underlying organic layer prevents the silicidation of the annealed Co film on the Si substrate while promoting interface adhesion values as high as 8.2 J m −2 ± 0.7 J m −2 for a 50-nm thick Co film. Selective electroless deposition of Co directly on dielectric surfaces, promoted by amino-terminated organic films in combination with a selective Pd catalyst.