Plasma-polymerized toluene films for corrosion inhibition in microelectronic devices

In view of decreasing dimensions in microelectronic devices, the question of how to protect effectively the multilevel interconnections from corrosion becomes more and more important. Generally, the corrosion failure of electronic devices is mainly related to interconnect metals such as copper forming porous oxide layers on the surface and the increased use of new developed polymers as interlayer dielectrics in microelectronic devices. In this paper plasma-polymerized toluene films were considered as a possible candidate for a interlayer dielectric for multilevel metallization of ultra large scale integrated (ULSI) semiconductor devices. The protective abilities of plasma-polymerized toluene films as a function of RF power and deposition temperature in a 3.5 wt.% NaCl solution were examined by electrochemical methods and FT-IR analyses. The protective efficiency of the film increased with increasing RF power and deposition temperature, which induced the higher degree of cross-linking in the film.