Role of oxidant on polishing selectivity in the chemical mechanical planarization of W/Ti/TiN layers

W/Ti/TiN막의 연마 선택비 개선을 위한 산화제의 역할

Tungsten is widely used as a plug for the multi-level interconnection structures. However, due to the poor adhesive properties of tungsten (W) on $SiO_2$ layer, the Ti/TiN barrier layer is usually deposited onto $SiO_2$ for increasing adhesion ability with W film. Generally, for the W-CMP (chemical mechanical polishing) process, the passivation layer on the tungsten surface during CMP plays an important role. In this paper, the effect of oxidants controlling the polishing selectivity of W/Ti/TiN layer were investigated. The alumina $(Al_2O_3)$ abrasive containing slurry with 5 % $H_2O_2$ as the oxidizer, was studied. As our preliminary experimental results, very low removal rates were observed for the case of no-oxidant slurry. This low removal rate is only due to the mechanical abrasive force. However, for Ti and TiN with 5 % $H_2O_2$ oxidizer, different removal rate was observed. The removal mechanism of Ti during CMP is mainly due to mechanical abrasive, whereas for TiN, it is due to the formation of metastable soluble peroxide complex.