We have developed a novel scanning near-field microwave probe capable of precise quantitative measurements of dielectric constant of thin dielectric films. The technique is noncontact and has a few-micron sampling spot-size. For dielectric films with k<7 and thickness down to 200 nm the probe provides precision and accuracy better than 1% and 5%, respectively. The probe is based on a balanced parallel-plate microwave transmission line operating at 4 GHz. Unlike the apertureless STM- or AFM-based schemes that have been previously employed, our “apertured” approach allows for truly quantitative measurements on a few-micron length scale with result that is insensitive to the material property outside this probing volume.

We will present quantitative measurements on a variety of so-called low-k dielectric films, which are of great interest to the semiconductor industry as replacements for SiO2 in interconnect wiring. When the probe is placed in close proximity to the film under test its fringe capacitance is governed by the sample permittivity, the tip geometry, and the tip-sample separation. We measure this capacitance with a resolution down to 30 zF using a microwave resonator. Extraction of the film dielectric constant is based on an original approach providing for removal of the substrate contribution. Bulk Si and a set of variable thickness thermal oxide films are employed to calibrate the probe. There is no need to know the absolute value of the tip-sample separation for either measurement or calibration procedures; this separation must only be kept nominally the same for both measurements, which is achieved by a virtually material independent shear-force distance control.