During ITF USA 2019, Imec presented a dual-damascene 21nm pitch test vehicle that fits the manufacturing the 3nm logic technology node. This test vehicle provides a 30% improvement in resistance-capacitance product (RC) in comparison with previous generations, without impacting reliability. The need for implementing scaling boosters such as self-aligned vias and self-aligned blocks in 3nm and beyond interconnect technologies has been demonstrated. Thus, while the dimensional scaling of traditional front-end technologies is expected to slow down, the back-end-of-line dimensions keep on scaling with ~0.7X to keep up with the required area scaling. Regarding the 3nm logic technology node, M2 interconnect layers with metal pitches as tight as 21nm need to be manufactured while preserving the back-end-of-line’s performance. This implies a tight control of the RC delay, while maintaining good reliability.
World first demonstration of 2 Metal layer back-end-of-line for the 3nm technology node
The test vehicle also demonstrates no electromigration failures after 530 hours at 330°C, and dielectric breakdown (TDDB) measurements demonstrated a time-to-failure >10 years at 100°C. In addition, to pattern the M2 layer, a hybrid lithography approach was proposed, using 193nm immersion-based self-aligned quadrupole patterning (SAQP) for printing the lines and trenches, and extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL) for printing the block and via structures. The test vehicle implemented a barrier-less ruthenium (Ru) metallization scheme and an insulator with dielectric constant k = 3.0. The first results also demonstrate that the proposed interconnect technology can be improved by adding scaling boosters, including buried power rail, SuperVia, self-aligned blocks, fully self-aligned vias and double self-aligned blocks.
