Granted Patent B2

US 12,191,198 · App. 17/002,220 · Granted Jan 7, 2025

Inventors: Feihu Wang (San Jose, CA); Joung Joo Lee (San Jose, CA); Xi Cen (San Jose, CA); Zhibo Yuan (Santa Clara, CA); Wei Lei (Campbell, CA); Kai Wu (Palo Alto, CA); Chunming Zhou (Fremont, CA); Zhebo Chen (San Jose, CA)

Assignee: Applied Materials, Inc.

H01L21/76843H01L21/2855H01L21/28556H01L21/76876H01L21/76877H01L23/53266H01L21/02068H01L23/5283

Abstract

Claims (19)

1. A method of forming a tungsten stack and filling a trench on a substrate, the method comprising:

placing the substrate on a substrate support in a physical vapor deposition chamber, not applying a bias voltage to the substrate support, and forming a tungsten liner layer on the trench comprising dielectric material, two sidewalls and a bottom, the tungsten liner layer covering the two sidewalls and the bottom and formed using a physical vapor deposition process using Kr as a process gas; and

forming a tungsten film directly on the tungsten liner layer to form the tungsten stack having a stack resistivity, the tungsten film formed using a chemical vapor deposition process and filling the trench, wherein formation of the tungsten film does not include forming a nucleation layer on the tungsten liner layer, wherein the trench has a width less than 65 nm,

wherein not applying the bias voltage to the substrate support controls the grain size of the tungsten liner layer to greater than 200 Ångstroms and improves the stack resistivity.

2. The method of claim 1 , wherein the tungsten liner layer is free of tungsten oxide.

3. The method of claim 2 , wherein the tungsten stack formed by the method does not include a TiN layer.

4. The method of claim 2 , wherein the method further comprises forming the tungsten liner layer in a PVD chamber, removing the substrate from the PVD chamber, exposing the substrate to ambient atmosphere and treating the tungsten liner layer to remove tungsten oxide from the tungsten liner layer.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein treating the tungsten liner layer comprises exposing the tungsten liner layer to hydrogen gas and exposing the tungsten liner layer to WF 6 gas.

6. The method of claim 2 , wherein the method further comprises forming the tungsten liner layer in a PVD chamber, removing the substrate from the PVD chamber, and placing the substrate in a CVD chamber without exposing the substrate to ambient atmosphere.

7. The method of claim 2 , wherein forming the tungsten liner layer on the substrate using Kr as the process gas increases the grain size of the tungsten liner layer compared to a process that uses an Ar process gas.

8. The method of claim 7 , wherein the tungsten liner layer comprises alpha-W and no beta-W.

9. The method of claim 7 , wherein the tungsten film has a grain size exceeding 250 Ångstroms.

10. The method of claim 9 , wherein the tungsten film stack has a resistivity of less than 10 μohm-cm.

11. The method of claim 2 , wherein forming the tungsten liner layer on the substrate using Kr as the process gas is performed at about 25° C.

12. The method of claim 11 , wherein the tungsten liner layer comprises alpha-W and no beta-W.

13. The method of claim 1 , wherein the trench comprises an aspect ratio of height to width of greater than or equal to about 5:1.

14. The method of claim 13 , wherein the trench has a width less than 25 nm.

15. The method of claim 1 , wherein the tungsten film stack has a resistivity of less than 10 μohm-cm.

16. The method of claim 1 , wherein the trench comprises an aspect ratio of height to width of greater than or equal to about 10:1.

Assignments (1)

Continuity (1)

References Cited (20)