Low resistivity metal lines formed by functional liquids and successive treatment of catalytically generated hydrogen atoms in the Cat-CVD system

Metal-interconnection among electrodes is an important process to fabricate electronic devices. A novel high-speed technique using silver (Ag) functional liquid to form Ag lines is proposed. For improvement of the electrical conductivity of the Ag lines, atomic hydrogen (H) generated by the Cat-CVD system is used. There is a sintering phenomenon among Ag nanoparticles (~ 50 nm) during H treatment at low substrate temperatures (~ 100 °C). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) reveals that the Ag grain size increases with H annealing duration, which results in the resistivity of the Ag lines on an order of 10⁻⁶ Ω cm.