Influence of Specific Si Resistance on the Morphology of Zn Films Formed by Reacting Al-Si Alloy with Zincate Solution

The electrochemical behavior of Al-Si alloy films in zincate solution was investigated to elucidate the effects of zincate pretreatment on the Zn morphology and subsequent electroless NiP deposition, which is used for under bump metallization (UBM) in integrated circuit (IC) chip packaging. To investigate the electrochemical behavior of the Al-Si films during the zincate pretreatment, the immersion potential and the surface morphology during Zn and NiP deposition were evaluated using Al-Si electrodes that had been fabricated onto two types of Si substrates with different specific resistances. A heterogeneous point was observed for samples fabricated onto Si substrates with high specific resistance (45-95 Ωm), but no such point was observed on samples fabricated onto Si substrates with low specific resistance (0.00001-0.00002 Ωm). This result suggests that the morphology of the deposits was affected considerably by the specific resistance of the Si substrate.