Organic additive effects in physical and electrical properties of electroplated Cu thin film

Cu has been used for metallic interconnects in ULSI applications because of its lower resistivity according to the scaling down of semiconductor devices. The resistivity of Cu lines will affect the RC delay and will limit signal propagation in integrated circuits. In this study, we investigated the characteristics of electroplated Cu films according to the variation of concentration of organic additives. The plating electrolyte composed of $CuSO_4{\cdot}5H_2O$, $H_2SO_4$ and HCl, was fixed. The sheet resistance was measured with a four-point probe and the material properties were investigated with XRD (X-ray Diffraction), AFM (Atomic Force Microscope), FE-SEM (Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope) and XPS (X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy). From these experimental results, we found that the organic additives play an important role in formation of Cu film with lower resistivity by EPD.