Damascene process simulation using molecular dynamics

SP Ju and CI Weng and CC Hwang, JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS, 92, 7062-7069 (2002).

DOI: 10.1063/1.1519947

This article uses a molecular dynamics parallel computing technique to investigate trench filling in the damascene process. The qualitative behavior of the trench filling process for different incident energies and substrate temperatures is described in terms of the filling morphology and the filling characteristics. The significance of the geometric size of the simulation model is evaluated by comparing the coverage percentage results obtained from the current large model with the results presented previously for a small model. Similar filling characteristics are identified for both simulation models. This indicates that the qualitative behavior is independent of the model size. However, a quantitative comparison shows that when the incident energy is small, or when the substrate temperature is high, the geometric dimensions of the model become significant. Finally, the results demonstrate that the nature of the relationship between coverage percentage improvement and incident energy is dependent on the model size. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.

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