Low thermal budget processing of organic dielectrics

Low dielectric constant organic materials are ideal for use as interconnect dielectrics for integrated circuits (ICs) to reduce power dissipation, crosstalk and RC delays. For high performance and reliability of ICs, reduced thermal and intrinsic stress is highly desirable. Low thermal budget rapid isothermal processing (RIP) can provide materials with lower stress. In this paper, we demonstrate the role of photoeffects in the curing of polyimide films using a rapid isothermal processor as a source of optical and thermal energy. The availability of large a number of ultraviolet and vacuum ultraviolet photons on the film surface allowed a lower curing temperature and also resulted in the lowest leakage current and film stress. We demonstrate a direct one-to-one correlation between electrical, mechanical, and structural properties of the organic dielectrics     

Effect of vacuum ultraviolet radiation on the gap fill propertiesof Teflon amorphous fluoropolymer film deposited by direct liquidinjection

In this work, the roles of vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) photons in improving the gap fill properties of a low dielectric constant (K) material (Teflon amorphous fluoropolymer, K=1.93) deposited by direct liquid injection assisted rapid photothermal chemical vapor deposition technique are discussed. A qualitative explanation is presented wherein it is proposed that high-energy photons provide photoexcitation of the species involved in the deposition of Teflon AF^TM, thereby lowering the activation energy and migrational enthalpy required for surface diffusion leading to a higher molecular mobility on the patterned surface     

Chemical vapor deposition and characterization of amorphous teflon fluoropolymerthin films

Dielectric materials with dielectric constant (K) less than the conventionally used SiO₂ (K = 3.9) are gaining importance particularly for low voltage operated integrated circuits due to their ability to reduce signal propagation delays, power dissipation, and crosstalk when used as interconnect dielectrics. In this paper, we report for the first time ever a chemical vapor deposition technique for the deposition of the copolymeric amorphous Teflon fluoropolymer AF 1600 which is a new low K material with a value of K of about 1.93. The principle of direct liquid injection in an ultra-violet (UV) light assisted rapid isothermal processing system was followed. Different processing cycles were studied with and without the UV source to investigate the effect of high energy photons during processing on the film properties. Preliminary characterization results indicate that the processed films exceed the established dielectric performance standards required for future generation IC manufacturing. An improvement in film properties was observed when the UV source was used during processing.     

Itanium processor microarchitecture

The Itanium processor is the first implementation of the IA-64 instruction set architecture (ISA). The design team optimized the processor to meet a wide range of requirements: high performance on Internet servers and workstations, support for 64-bit addressing, reliability for mission-critical applications, full IA-32 instruction set compatibility in hardware, and scalability across a range of operating systems and platforms. The processor employs EPIC (explicitly parallel instruction computing) design concepts for a tighter coupling between hardware and software. In this design style the hardware-software interface lets the software exploit all available compilation time information and efficiently deliver this information to the hardware. It addresses several fundamental performance bottlenecks in modern computers, such as memory latency, memory address disambiguation, and control flow dependencies