Thin-lm deposition

Thomas MacDonald
University of Sydney (Dated: September 16, 2012) An investigation into the deposition of thin metal lms is presented. A substrate was built up using evaporative deposition of aluminium, onto which was deposited copper through the use of magnetron sputtering. The behaviour of the copper growth was indirectly observed through measurement of its resistivity.

I. INTRODUCTION

The manufacture of thin conducting lms by various techniques of metal deposition has become used in a range of industries, with applications ranging from energy ecient windows1 to multilayer coatings for tools2 . Perhaps most notably the vital importance of metal deposition techniques to modern microprocessor manufacture, where components are routinely produced on the scale of tens of nanometres. Copper and aluminium are both commonly used in these areas due to their low bulk resistivities of 1.67 cm and 2.67 cm respectively. However, achieved resistivities are rarely this low in practice: lm growth is never perfectly homogeneous, leading to areas with a thicker or thinner coating than the average value. This is especially signicant for very thin lms (typically below 10 nm) where islands of metal can form surrounded by uncoated substrate, signicantly increasing resistivity from bulk . Further, interactions with the surface of the thin layer are far more signicant than in macroscopic bulk components, the proportionally greater role of surface interactions for lms contributing to a higher resistivity than might otherwise be expected.

even return to the gas phase. Diused atoms move across the substrate until they either lose enough energy to rebind, or encounter a region of dierent material where the binding forces are strong enough to overcome them. Examples of such regions include impurities, surface defects or most importantly other bound adatoms. Because of this, early lm growth occurs in the form of unconnected islands of metal, with incoming atoms predominantly adding to these nucleation sites which slowly spread to cover the substrate surface. There are eectively three possible growth modes, as shown in 1. At this point, electron conduction occurs normally within the islands, and between them via electron tunnelling. Eventually, enough islands meet and overlap to form a continuous conducting path over the insulating substrate: this point is known as the percolation threshold. It has been shown3 that the percolation threshold can be observed by recording the resistance R and thickness t of a lm as it grows, and plotting the following relationship: t = Rt2 (1)

Where Rt2 is at a minimum, the percolation threshold has been reached, and conduction becomes dominated by the classical process of electronic transfers within the metals conduction band. This is accompanied by a large drop in resistivity, which continues to slowly decrease toward bulk as the layer grows and scattering from the lm surface becomes increasingly negligible. Literature gives the mean free path for a delocalised electron in copper as 39 nm, and so the resistivity (f ilm ) remains high until this thickness has been well surpassed, with Barnat et al claiming4 an observed resistivity f ilm = 4.8 0.3 cm for a lm of t = 100 nm; a factor of 2.9 times higher than bulk for copper.

FIG. 1. The three principal growth modes in lm deposition. a) layer-by-layer or der Merwe growth, b) island or VolmerWeber growth, and c) layer-plus-island or Stranski-Krastinov growth.

Preparation of thin lms

Fundamentally, metal lm deposition occurs when metal atoms or ions in the gas phase encounter a substrate, and in doing so lose enough kinetic energy to allow Van der Waals or covalent forces to bind them to the surface. These adsorbed atoms, or adatoms, may still have sucient kinetic energy to diuse over the substrate, or

As stated, thin lms are generally prepared by placing metal atoms or ions in the gas or plasma phase, then allowed them to condense onto a target substrate. In practice, this can be achieved in a number of ways, with the choice of methods largely based on the metal to be deposited. The most conceptually simple method is that of evaporative deposition, in which a sample of the metal to

2 be deposited is boiled and then recondensed onto a cool target (in the context of boiling metals, almost anything becomes cool enough for deposition). This can be relatively easily achieved using resistively heated tungsten: with a melting point of 3422C compared with boiling points of 2467 C and 2562C for aluminium and copper respectively, which can be signicantly reduced under vacuum, the metal to be deposited will boil long before the tungsten begins to melt. Another method of deposition is magnetron sputter coating. In it, a large voltage is applied between an anode and a cathode of the material to be sputtered, in the presence of an inert gas (typically argon). The positive ions formed are accelerated toward the
II. EXPERIMENTAL
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aluminium on all available surfaces, and a few seconds later the current was switched o and the the apparatus allowed to cool for fteen minutes while still under vacuum. Here I talk about how it worked.

The substrate to be used was prepared initially using evaporative deposition of aluminium. Two standard 25 mm by 75 mm glass microscop slides were placed in the bottom of a vacuum chamber, and a third slide was placed across them both to mask o the centre. An evaporation unit consisting of several strands of tungsten wire wound between two posts was prepared by winding approximately 30 mm of aluminium wire around the tunsten laments, with the assemblage then being connected to a DC high current source and placed approximately 25 cm above the substrate. The vacuum chamber used was part of a Dynavac deposition apparatus, and was then pumped down to 1 101 mbar using a rotary pump, after which an oil diusion pump was activated. At the time of the experiment, the high-vacuum gauge was nonfunctional, and so the lowest pressure reached was recorded as 1.0 103 mbar. The achieved pressure was likely in the order of 104 mbar, but this is impossible to verify with the data acquired. With the chamber evacuated, a DC current was applied across the evaporation unit, heating the tungsten element. An early attempt in which this current was applied quickly led to the tungsten heating to a bright red and cutting through the aluminium wire instead of melting it; the pieces of wire fell away from the tungsten and no deposition occurred. The second attempt was far more successful: slowly increasing the applied current to a maximum of approximately 60A led to the aluminium rst melting to wet the tungsten, and then boiling. Vision into the vacuum chamber was blocked within seconds due to rapid deposition of

FIG. 2. Measured lm resistance as a function of thickness.

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FIG. 3. Rt2 as a function of thickness. Dataset truncated to the region of interest for the sake of clarity.

tmac8251@uni.sydney.edu.au [1] J. M. M.-D. A. M.-R. R. J. Martin-Palma, L. Vasquez, Sol. Energy Mater. Sol. Cells 53, 55 (1998). [2] . [3] B. L. E. A. I. Maaroof, J. Appl. Phys. 76 (1994). [4] P.-I. W. T.-M. L. E. V. Barnat, D. Nagakura, J. Appl. Phys. 91, 1667 (2002).



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FIG. 4. f ilm vs t