Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2011
Interdiffusion barrier characteristics of molybdenum thin films with Alusil(Al-1% Si) is studied between 733 and 7 63 K via sheet and contact resistance measurements, Rutherford backseattering spectrometry, secondary ion mass spectroscopy, and x-ray diffraction analysis. The results indicate that thermal annealing of Mo/Alusil thin film couples leads to MoAl compound formation initially as a nonplanar front, but extensive annealing results in complete transformation of Alusil to MoAl12 and a significant increase in contact resistance. The interdiffusion kinetics is studied and implications of these observations to VLSI device characteristics is discussed. Based on these results a safe time-temperature processing regime is proposed.