Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 February 2011
Multilevel interconnects for high performance ULSI need low dielectric constant materials for inter-metal layer dielectric, or ILD, to reduce signal propagation delay, power consumption and cross talk noises. We have studied the physical, dielectric and processing properties of a wide variety of promising low dielectric polymeric materials for ILD applications. This paper presents capacitance values measured over a wide range of temperature, and a summary of the measured dielectric properties. The anisotropy 1,2 of dielectric properties were determined experimentally, the vertical (out-of-plane) dielectric properties were determined by MIM (Metal-Insulator-Metal) measurements, and the horizontal (in-plane) dielectric properties were determined by intra-line measurements of sub-half micron serpentine and comb test structures.