Fabrication and characterization of mesoporous dielectric materials for ULSI interconnect applications

Abstract

With the miniaturization of semiconductor devices, new dielectric materials with dielectric constant (k) lower than silicon dioxide (k = 4.0) are required to reduce propagation delay, cross talk noise and power dissipation of the interconnect system in ultra-large-scale integrated circuits (ULSI). This thesis presents the results of fabrication and characterization of mesoporous organosilicate films used as interconnect dielectrics. Two basic methods to establish porous network in the films, namely the sol-gel and sacrificial template approaches, have been used in this work.