Investigation For The Transport Behavior And Mechanism Of Oxidation Process Of Nano-scale Metal Thin Film

Elementary transport behavior is one of the basic characters of material. It is involved in many fields, including electrical device manufacture, reliability and failure analysis. In recent years, metal thin films are widely used in many fields such as ultra high density storage film, nanoelectronics devices and so on. Therefore the transport behavior through the metal film is a remarkable topic. To clarify the law of transport in thin film will have great impact on both science and practice.In this paper, copper is chosen and prepared to thin film. The transport behavior of this system is studied experimentally and theoretically. Special phenomena and rules are revealed and the mechanism of transport process is discussed. All results can be a useful guidance to fast preparation of the relevant films and failure analysis. The main findings are as follow-ups:1. A new in-situ method was developed for characterizing the kinetics of the oxidation process of copper thin films by using sheet resistance. Copper thin films were prepared on glass substrate by vacuum deposition. The oxidation kinetics of the copper thin films was studied via sheet resistance which increased during the process. The results suggested that this new method can be applied to characterization of the reaction kinetics process of copper thin film.2. Oxidation behaviour of a nano-scale copper film at 140℃was investigated in this paper. Nano-scale copper films were prepared on glass substrate by vacuum deposition at different depositing rates. Atomic force microscope (AFM) was applied to characterization of the surface morphology of these thin films to choose suitable samples. Kinetics of the oxidation process of the copper films in the thickness range of 16-22 nm at 140℃was studied by using transmission spectrum and sheet resistance methods. The crystal structures and compositions of the oxidation products were analyzed with X-ray diffraction (XRD). The results show that the copper was oxidized to form Cu₂O following a cubic rate law at 140℃.