Abstract
In this paper, we report in-situ spectroscopic ellipsometry of Cu deposition from supercritical carbon dioxide fluids. The motivations of this work were 1) to perform a detailed observation of Cu growth with precision optical metrology, 2) to study substrate dependence on Cu growth, particularly for Ru and TiN substrates in the present case, and 3) to demonstrate the possibility and usefulness of ellipsometry for diagnosing supercritical fluid processing. The Cu deposition was carried out through hydrogen reduction of a Cu β-diketonate precursor at 160–180 °C. During growth, a very large deviation of ellipsometric parameters (Ψ and Δ) from a single-layer model prediction was observed; this deviation was much larger than that expected from island formation which has been frequently reported in in-situ ellipsometric observation of the vapor growth of thin films. From model analyses, it was found that an abnormal dielectric layer having a high refractive index and a thickness of 10–50 nm is present on the growing Cu surface. The refractive index of this layer was (1.5–2) + (0.2–0.3)i; and from this, we concluded that this layer is the condensed precursor. The condensed layer develops prior to Cu nucleation. As for the substrate dependence on Cu growth, both layers develop faster on Ru than on TiN. This corresponds to the fact that chemisorption occurs more easily on Ru. The deposition kinetics under the presence of the condensed layer are also discussed.