Measurement of thermal stress and stress relaxation in confined metal lines. II. Stress relaxation study

The bending beam technique and stress analysis developed for stress measurements of fine line structures have been applied to investigate stress relaxation in confined Al (2 at. % Cu) line structures on a Si substrate. The observed relaxation of the line structure is compared with corresponding unpassivated and passivated layered film structures. The overall behavior of all structure is similar, showing an initial plastic deformation, then a fast relaxation in sequence with a log(time) slow relaxation. The kinetics of these relaxation processes are found to decrease due to the presence of the passivation and a higher degree of dielectric layer confinement. In addition, the relaxation behavior of the principal stress components of the line structure is anisotropic and does not vary monotonically with the annealing temperature. The results are attributed to the relaxation mechanism and interaction at the metal/dielectric interface.