Embedded Metal Voids Detection to Improve Copper Metallization for Advanced Interconnect

We present here our studies on using electron beams to locate copper fill voids in dual damascene structures down to 10nm CD. It is shown that the e-beam technique can be optimized for detecting embedded voids in non-destructive manner that enables faster process development on 300mm wafers by reducing the dependence on time consuming methods such as Transmission Electron Microscope (TEM), while at the same time providing statistically significant information during process development and monitoring.