Study on TiN film growth mechanism using spectroscopic ellipsometry

We performed an ellipsometric study of TiN films on Si substrate to determine optimal conditions for TiN deposition, which is one of main processes in the memory device fabrication. To analyze structural changes of TiN films during the growth including nucleation, merging, and uniform growth, we applied an effective medium approximation model and calculated uneven characteristics of the growing layer. This result is expected to be widely applied for the TiN deposition process optimization and in-line process monitoring according to the decreasing size of the semiconductor devices for further integration in the future.