Application of Pulsed Chemical Vapor Deposited Tungsten Thin Film as a Nucleation Layer for Ultrahigh Aspect Ratio Tungsten-Plug Fill Process

Tungsten (W) thin film was deposited at $400^{\circ}C$ using pulsed chemical vapor deposition (pulsed CVD); film was then evaluated as a nucleation layer for W-plug deposition at the contact, with an ultrahigh aspect ratio of about 14~15 (top opening diameter: 240~250 nm, bottom diameter: 98~100 nm) for dynamic random access memory. The deposition stage of pulsed CVD has four steps resulting in one deposition cycle: (1) Reaction of $WF_6$ with $SiH_4$. (2) Inert gas purge. (3) $SiH_4$ exposure without $WF_6$ supply. (4) Inert gas purge while conventional CVD consists of the continuous reaction of $WF_6$ and $SiH_4$. The pulsed CVD-W film showed better conformality at contacts compared to that of conventional CVD-W nucleation layer. It was found that resistivities of films deposited by pulsed CVD were closely related with the phases formed and with the microstructure, as characterized by the grain size. A lower contact resistance was obtained by using pulsed CVD-W film as a nucleation layer compared to that of the conventional CVD-W nucleation layer, even though the former has a higher resistivity (${\sim}100{\mu}{\Omega}-cm$) than that of the latter (${\sim}25{\mu}{\Omega}-cm$). The plan-view scanning electron microscopy images after focused ion beam milling showed that the lower contact resistance of the pulsed CVD-W based W-plug fill scheme was mainly due to its better plug filling capability.