Nanoscale tomographic reconstruction of the subsurface mechanical properties of low-k high-aspect ratio patterns

Published

October 2, 2016

Author(s)

Gheorghe Stan, Ebony Mays, Hui-Jae Yoo, Sean King

Abstract

In this work, intermittent contact resonance (ICR)-AFM was performed on high-aspect ratio a-SiOC:H patterned fins (100 nm in height and width from 20 nm to 90 nm) to map the depth and width dependencies of the material stiffness. The spatial resolution and depth sensitivity of the measurements were assessed from tomographic cross-sections over various regions of interest within the 3D space of the measurements. Furthermore, the depth-dependence of the measured contact stiffness over the scanned area was used to determine the sub-surface variation of the elastic modulus at each point in the scan. This was achieved by iteratively adjusting the local elastic profile until the depth dependence of the resulted contact stiffness matched the depth dependence of the contact stiffness measured by ICR-AFM at that location. The results of this analysis were assembled into nanoscale subsurface tomographic images of the elastic modulus of the investigated SiOC:H patterns. A new 3D structure-property representation emerged from these tomographic images with direct evidence for the alterations sustained by the structures during processing.

Citation

ACS Nano

Pub Type

Journals

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Keywords

nanoscale, elastic modulus, atomic force microscopy

Citation

Stan, G. , Mays, E. , Yoo, H. and King, S. (2016), Nanoscale tomographic reconstruction of the subsurface mechanical properties of low-k high-aspect ratio patterns, ACS Nano, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=920549 (Accessed January 27, 2025)