• Journal of Korean Vacuum Science & Technology
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.11-18
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• 2001

Dielectric passivation effects on the EM(electromigration) have been a great interest with recent ULSI and multilevel structure tends in thin film interconnections of a microelectronic device. SiO$_2$, PSG(phosphosilicate glass), and Si$_3$N$_4$ passivation materials effects on the EM resistance were investigated by utilizing widely used Al-1%Si thin film interconnections. A standard photolithography process was applied for the fabrication of 0.7㎛ thick 3㎛ wide, and 200㎛ ~1600㎛ long Al-1%Si EM test patterns. SiO$_2$, PSG, and Si$_3$N$_4$ dielectric passivation with the thickness of 300 nm were singly deposited onto the Al-1%Si thin film interconnections by using an APCVD(atmospheric pressure chemical vapor deposition) and a PECVD(plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition) in order to investigate the passivation materials effects on the EM characteristics. EM tests were performed at the direct current densities of 3.2 $\times$ 10$\^$6/∼4.5 $\times$ 10$\^$6/ A/cm$^2$ and at the temperatures of 180 $\^{C}$, 210$\^{C}$, 240$\^{C}$, and 270$\^{C}$ for measuring the activation energies(Q) and for accelerated test conditions. Activation energies were calculated from the measured MTF(mean-time-to-failure) values. The calculated activation energies for the electromigration were 0.44 eV, 0.45 eV, and 0.50 eV, and 0.66 eV for the case of nonpassivated-, Si$_3$N$_4$passivated-, PSG passivated-, and SiO$_2$ passivated Al-1%Si thin film interconnections, respectively. Thus SiO$_2$ passivation showed the best characteristics on the EM resistance followed by the order of PSG, Si$_3$N$_4$ and nonpassivation. It is believed that the passivation sequences as well as the passivation materials also influence on the EM characteristics in multilevel passivation structures.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.27-30
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• 2001

Electromigration Phenomena in Al-1%Si thin film interconnections under DC and PDC conditions were investigated. Thin film interconnections with $SiO_2$ and PSG/$SiO_2$ dielectric passivation layer were formed by a standard photolithography process method and test line lengths were 100, 400, 800, 1200, and 1600 $\mu\textrm{m}$. The current density of $1.19\times10^7\textrm{A/cm}^2$ was stressed in Al-1%Si thin film interconnections under DC condition. The current density of $1.19\times10^7\textrm{A/cm}^2$ was also applied under PDC condition at the frequency of 1 Hz with the duty factor of 0.5. The electromigration resistance of PSG/SiO2 dielectric passivation test line was stronger than $SiO_2$ dielectric passivation test line. The lifetime under PDC was 2-4 times longer than DC condition. As the thin film interconnection line increased, the lifetime decreased and saturated over the critical length. Failure patterns by an electromigration were dominated by void-induced electrical open and hillock-induced electrical short.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.50 no.1
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• pp.78-85
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• 2012

Aluminum nitride(AlN) is a compound (III-V group) of hexagonal system with a crystal structure. Its Wurzite phase is a very wide band gap semiconductor material. It has not only a high thermal conductivity, a high electrical resistance, a high electrical insulating constant, a high breakdown voltage and an excellent mechanical strength but also stable thermal and chemical characteristics. This study is on the preferred orientation characteristics of AlN thin films by reactive evaporation using $NH_3$. We have manufactured an AlN thin film and then have checked the crystal structure and the preferred orientation by using an X-ray diffractometer and have also observed the microstructure with TEM and AlN chemical structure with FT-IR. We can manufacture an excellent AlN thin film by reactive evaporation using $NH_3$ under 873 K of substrate temperature. The AlN thin film growth is dependent on Al supplying and $NH_3$ has been found to be effective as a source of $N_2$. However, the nuclear structure of AlN did not occur randomly around the substrate a particle of the a-axis orientation in fast growth speed becomes an earlier crystal structure and is shown to have an a-axis preferred orientation. Therefore, reactive evaporation using $NH_3$ is not affected by provided $H_2$ amount and this can be an easy a-axis orientation method.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.287-292
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• 2010

We have investigated the effects of oxygen flow ratios on the structural, morphological, and optical properties of AlN thin films grown by using radio-frequency reactive magnetron sputtering. The AlN thin films were deposited at $300^{\circ}C$ of substrate temperature, and the reactive gas were supplied with both nitrogen and oxygen. The oxygen flow ratio was varied by controlling the amount of oxygen with respect to the total mixed gases, 0%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, and 30%. The structural, morphological, and optical properties of the deposited AlN thin films were examined by using X-ray diffractometer, scanning electron microscopy, and ultraviolet-visible spectrophotometer. The AlN thin film grown at 10% of oxygen flow ratio indicated an average transmittance of 91.3% in the wavelength range of 350~1,100 nm and an optical band gap of 4.30 eV. The experimental results suggest that AlN thin films can be deposited optionally by varying the oxygen flow ratio.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.42-50
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• 2006

Co-Fe-Al-O nano-granular thin films with high electrical resistivity, fabricated by radio frequency magnetron sputtering under an $Ar+O_2$ atmosphere, are found to show good soft magnetic properties in the GHz frequency range. The real part value of the relative permeability is 260 at low frequencies and this value is maintained up to the GHz frequency range. A non-integrated type noise filter on a coplanar waveguide transmission line is demonstrated by using the Co-Fe-Al-O nano-granular thin film with the dimensions of $4\;mm(l){\times}4\;mm(w){\times}0.1\;{\mu}m(t)$. The insertion loss is very low being less than 0.3 dB and this low value is maintained up to 2 GHz. At a ferromagnetic resonance frequency of 3.3 GHz, the degree of noise suppression is measured to be 3 dB. This level of noise attenuation is small for real applications, but there is much room for further improvement by increasing the magnetic volume and integrating the magnetic thin film into the CPW transmission line.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.81-85
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• 2007

Embedded capacitor technology can improve electrical perfomance and reduce assembly cost compared with traditional discrete capacitor technology. To improve the capacitance density of the $Al_2O_3$ based embedded capacitor on Cu cladded fiber reinforced plastics (FR-4), the specific surface area of the $Al_2O_3$ thin films was enlarged and their surface morphologies were controlled by anodization process parameters. From I-V characteristics, it was found that breakdown voltage and leakage current were 23 V and $1{\times}10^{-6}A/cm^2$ at 3.3 V, respectively. We have also measured C-V characteristics of $Pt/Al_2O_3/Al/Ti$ structure on CU/FR4. The capacitance density was $300nF/cm^2$ and the dielectric loss was 0.04. This nano-porous $Al_2O_3$ is a good material candidate for the embedded capacitor application for electronic products.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2007.06a
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• pp.385-386
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• 2007

We prepared the Al doped ZnO coating Ag multilayer thin films on glass without substrate heating using FTS system. The structure of multilayer thin films has Al doped ZnO/Ag/Al doped ZnO(AZO/Ag/AZO). The thickness of top and bottom AZO thin films were fixed to 50 nm, respectively and controlled the thickness of Ag thin films with deposition time. As-doped multilayer thin films were prepared at 1mTorr and input power (DC) of 100W at room temperature. To investigate the film properties, we employed four-point probe, UVNIS spectrometer, X-ray diffractometer (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Hall Effect measurement system and Atomic Force Microscope (AFM).

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2003.04a
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• pp.140-142
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• 2003

ZnO thin films are demanded for device applications, so ZnO buffer layer was used to improve for good properties of ZnO thin film. In this study, the structural, electrical and optical properties of ZnO thin films deposited with various buffer thickness was investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Hall measurements, Photoluminescence(PL). ZnO buffer layer and ZnO thin films on sapphire($Al_{2}O_{3}$) substrate have been deposited $200^{\circ}C$ and $400^{\circ}C$ respectively by pulsed laser deposition. It is observed the variety of lattice constant of ZnO thin film by (101) peak position shift with various buffer thickness. It is founded that ZnO thin film with buffer thickness of 20 nm was larger resistivity of 200 factor and UV/visible of 2.5 factor than that of ZnO thin films without buffer layer. ZnO thin films with buffer thickness of 20 nm have shown the most properties.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.545-550
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• 2005

We have carried out the fabrications of a barrier layer on a polyethersulfon (PES) film and organic light emitting diode (OLED) based on a plastic substrate by means of atomic layer deposition (ALD). Simultaneous deposition of 30 nm $AlO_x$ film on both sides of the PES film gave a water vapor transition rate (WVTR) of $0.062 g/m^2/day (@38^{\circ}C,\;100%\;R.H.)$. Further, the double layer of 200 nm $SiN_x$ film deposited by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) and 20 nm $AlO_x$ film by ALD resulted in a WVTR value lower than the detection limit of MOCON. We have investigated the OLED encapsulation performance of the double layer using the OLED structure of ITO / MTDATA (20 nm) / NPD (40 nm) / AlQ (60 nm) / LiF (1 nm) / Al (75 nm) on a plastic substrate. The preliminary life time to reach 91% of the initial luminance $(1300 cd/m^2)$ was 260 hours for the OLED encapsulated with 100 nm of PECVD-deposited $SiN_x$ and 30 nm of ALD-deposited $AlO_x$.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.22 no.7
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• pp.549-554
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• 2009

Al thin films were synthesized on TiN/Si substrate by MOCVD using N-methylpyrrolidine alane (MPA) precursor. Effects of substrate temperature, reaction pressure on the deposition rate, surface roughness and electrical resistivity were investigated. The early stage of Al thin film formation was analyzed by in-situ surface reflectivity measurement with a laser and photometer apparatus. From the Arrhenius plot of deposition rate vs. substrate temperature, it was found that the activation energy of surface reaction was 91.1kJ/mole, and the transition temperature from surface-reaction-limited region to mass-transfer-limited region was about $150^{\circ}C$. The growth rate increased with the reaction pressure, and average growth rates of $200{\sim}1,200nm/min$ were observed at various experimental conditions. Surface roughness of the film increased with the film thickness. The electrical resistivity of Al film was about $4{\mu}{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$ in the case of optimum condition, and it was close to the value of the bulk Al, $2.7{\mu}{\Omega}{\cdot}cm$.