Temperature-dependent mechanical behavior of silicon dioxide, gold and gold-vanadium thin films for VLSI integrated circuits and MicroElectroMechanical systems (MEMs)

The Semiconductor Industry has grown rapidly in the last twenty years. The national technology roadmap for semiconductors plans for developing the complexity and packing density of semiconductor devices into the next decade, allowing ever smaller and more densely packed structures to be fabricated.; Recently, MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) have become important in modern technology. The goal of MEMs is to integrate many types of miniature devices on a single chip, creating a new micro-world.; The oxidation of silicon is one of the most important processes in semiconductor technology. Producing high-quality IC's and MEMS devices requires an understanding of the basic oxidation mechanism. In addition, for the reliability of IC's and MEMS devices, the mechanical properties of the oxide play a critical role. There has been an apparent convergence of opinion on the relevant mechanism leading to the “standard computational model” for stress effects on silicon oxidation. This model has recently become suspect. Most of the reasonably direct experimental data on the flow properties of SiO ₂ thin film do not support a stress-dependent viscosity of the sort envisioned by the model.; Gold and gold vanadium alloys are used in electrical interconnections and in radio frequency switch contacts for the semiconductor industry, MEMs sensors for the aerospace industry and also in brain probes by the bioelectronics mechanical industry. Despite the strong potential usage of gold and gold vanadium thin films at the small scale, very little is known about their mechanical properties.; Our goal was to experimentally investigate stress and its influence on SiO₂ thin films and the mechanical properties of gold and gold vanadium thin films at room temperature and at elevated temperature of different vanadium concentration.; We found that the application of relatively small amounts of bending to an oxidizing silicon substrate leads to significant decreases in oxide thickness in the ultrathin oxide regime. Both tensile and compressive bending retard oxide growth, although compressive bending results in somewhat thinner oxides than does tensile bending.; We also determined the modulus of gold and gold vanadium, and discovered that there is some evidence for a vanadium concentration dependence of the mechanical properties.