The characteristics of TiN films deposited by cyclic chemical vapor deposition

Titanium nitride (TiN) thin films were deposited by atomic layer deposition (ALD) method using the cyclic-chemical vapor deposition system. The purpos e of this study is to develop a new low-temperature cyclic chemical vapor d eposition (CVD) process with low chlorine content in TIN film for diffusion barrier. The characteristics of N/Ti ratio, impurity content, resistivity, structure, density, surface morphology and grain structure of the TiN film were characterized by using AES, RES, XRD, AFM and TEM. The growth rate wa s measured by the number of deposition cycle and was about 0.032 nm/cycle. The TIN film was slightly nitrogen-rich, with low chlorine content of below 1 at% and density of 4.7 g/cm(3). The XRD arid TEM results exhibited the r andomly oriented columnar structure. The low film resistivity of 117 mu Ome ga.cm was measured. This low resistivity is related to the low chemical con tent of chlorine and impurities. The surface roughness value was about 1.3 nm by AFM measurement. With these results, the cyclic CVD process is consid ered to be one of the most promising processes for multilevel metallization .