Effects of elastic strain on the agglomeration of silicide films for electrical contacts in integrated circuit applications

This paper reports a potential problem in the electrical performance of the silicide film to silicon contacts with respect to the scaling trend in integrated circuit (IC) devices. The effects of elastic strain on the agglomeration of the coherent silicide film embedded in an infinite matrix are studied employing continuum linear elasticity and finite-difference numerical method. The interface atomic diffusion is taken to be the dominant transport mechanism where both capillarity and elastic strain are considered for the driving forces. Under plane strain condition with elastically homogeneous and anisotropic system with cubic symmetry, the dilatational misfit and the tetragonal misfit in the direction parallel to the film thickness are considered. The numerical results on the shape evolution agree with the known trend that the equilibrium aspect ratio of the film increases with the elastic strain intensity. When the elastic strain intensity is taken to be only a function of the film size, the flat film morphology with a large aspect ratio becomes increasingly unstable since the equilibrium aspect ratio decreases, as the film scales. The shape evolution results in a large decrease in contact to silicon area, and may deteriorate the electrical performances.