APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS 92, 141917 2008

Characterization of the crystallographic microstructure

of the stress-induced void in Cu interconnects
Hyo-Jong Lee,1 Heung Nam Han,2,a Jae-Hun Kim,2 Suk Hoon Kang,2 Yi-Gil Cho,2
Jeong-Yun Sun,2 Do Hyun Kim,2 and Kyu Hwan Oh2
1

Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku University, 2-1-1 Katahira, Aoba-ku, Sendai 980-8577, Japan
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Seoul National University, San 56-1, Shinrim-dong,
Kwanak-gu, Seoul 151-744, Republic of Korea

Received 20 January 2008; accepted 17 March 2008; published online 10 April 2008
Stepwise cross-sectional crystallographic measurement was performed on the stress-induced void
SIV of copper interconnect and it was possible to investigate the three-dimensional
crystallographic structures near the submicron scale void. The void mainly happened at a triple
junction of grain boundaries and there were at least two grains with high biaxial elastic modulus
near the triple junction. The preferred site for the SIV could well be understood by considering the
elastic anisotropy of each grain and the grain boundary type. 2008 American Institute of Physics.
DOI: 10.1063/1.2906902
The stress-induced void SIV was firstly observed in the
aluminum interconnect in 1984.1 The SIV failure in the copper interconnect more frequently happened at the wider line
contacted with upper via pattern. Ogawa et al. reported that
the SIV in the copper interconnect resulted from the supersaturated vacancies in a wide line which moved along a
stress gradient by upper via pattern.2 Recently, Lee et al.
suggested more general case of voiding through the overall
investigation on the wide line.3 It was found that many voids
were generated outside of the via contact and many of them
were already generated before via patterning. In order to understand such a voiding tendency, it is necessary to measure
the microstructure of copper thin film.
Several researches have been performed on the preferred sites for void formation based on the copper
microstructure.47 Nucci et al. observed that the center void
formed at triple junction of grain boundaries.4 For the crystallographic texture, metal lines with stronger 111 texture
showed better resistance to void formation because of less
twist boundaries.5 However, Sekiguchi et al. reported that
the void formed at the corner of twin boundary with high
stress.6 Koike et al. reported that 111 texture films showed
worse stress-migration resistance because of the presence of
twins and higher thermal stress as compared with the 100
texture films.7 From these reports, there seems to be a controversy with respect to the characteristics of crystallographic microstructure for the voiding. In order to more rigorously discuss the SIV, it is necessary to find out the
crystallographic orientation of the vanished region by the
SIV. Although it is commonly impossible to measure the
vanished region, by using planar and cross-sectional measurements, it was possible to estimate the crystallographic
structure of the vanished region by measuring the threedimensional crystallographic structures near the submicron
scale void.
The sample was prepared following a conventional
damascene processes. A lower wide line of copper with a
thickness of 500 nm was fabricated by Cu electroplating and
chemical mechanical polishing. For upper passivation layer,
SiN 50 nm and fluorinated silicate glass FSG 500 nm
a

Electronic mail: hnhan@snu.ac.kr.

were deposited and the sample was stored in the bake oven
of 200 C for 500 h. After HTS, the FSG and SiN layers
were sequentially removed by wet stripping and dry etching.
Figure 1 showed the planar electron backscattered diffraction EBSD measurement for a large one among the
voids on the copper surface of a 10 m by 10 m square
pattern. Scanning electron microscope SEM image, EBSD
quality map, crystallographic orientation map of plane normal direction, and its schematic diagram are shown, respectively. Figure 1d showed the schematic diagram representing grain boundaries black lines and 3 twin boundaries
white lines, and the voided region was marked by a slanted
ellipse in red. From Fig. 1c, it was found out that the crystallographic information could be acquired in the voided
area. It was noted that all of the measured pixels in the
voided area were shown as a single color, namely, the same
orientation and it could be surmised that the void preferably
happened in a specific grain. In order to verify the crystallographic orientation of the voided region, EBSD measurement
was performed on the stepwise cross section of the sample
milled by focused ion beam. The EBSD orientation maps for
the three sections in Fig. 1c were shown in Fig. 2. From the
sections a and b, it can be seen that the grain structures were

FIG. 1. Color online SEM and EBSD measurement near the large void
with high magnification. a Planar SEM image, b EBSD quality map, c
crystallographic orientation map, and d its schematic diagram of grain and
twin boundaries are shown, respectively.

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92, 141917-1
2008 American Institute of Physics
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Lee et al.

FIG. 2. Color online Stepwise cross-sectional measurements. a Crystallographic orientation maps and b the schematic diagram of section c are
shown.

columnar and especially, the region 1 in the section b perpendicularly stood with narrow width. From the observation
of section c, it was found out that a portion of the voided
region remained after the voiding. The remaining portion in
section c has the same crystallographic orientation as the
region 1, as shown in Fig. 1d. It could be surmised that the
vanished region by the voiding had the same orientation as
region 1. From the cross-sectional investigations, as shown
in Fig. 2, it was found out that the voiding slightly occurred
at regions 3 and 4 as well as the region 1.
In order to understand the influence of the crystallographic orientation on the SIV, it is necessary to consider the
thermal stress for each grain. If it is assumed that increasing
the temperature, each grain is isotropically expanded without
any plastic deformation, the thermal stress for a grain in
copper thin film may have a linear relationship with the biaxial elastic modulus under biaxial strain state. The biaxial
elastic modulus of a grain in a thin film could be calculated
from its plane normal direction.8 The crystallographic orientation of the plane normal direction and the calculated biaxial
elastic modulus for each region were listed in Table I. The
voided triple junction in Fig. 1 was indicated as TJ1. The
voided triple junction means the triple junction, in which the
void happened. It was found that the region 1 had the highest
biaxial elastic modulus among the three regions joining at
the TJ1 and it agreed well with the previous result that the
void mainly happened at the region 1. Here, it was noted that
the SIV happened at the triple junction of grain boundaries
and the voided region had a relatively high equibiaxial thermal stress. However, it was well known that the void did not
happen at a certain triple junction. In order to find out the
additional condition for the SIV, it is necessary to investigate
the microstructural characteristics of the unvoided triple
junction.

FIG. 3. Color online Measurements of the crystallographic microstructure

for the comparison between the voided and unvoided triple junctions. The
site of the unvoided triple junction is marked in blue dotted circle and the
site of the voided triple junction is marked in red dotted circle.

Figure 3a shows other triple junctions of TJ2 and TJ3.

The TJ2 consisted of regions 5, 6, 7, and 8 and the TJ3
consisted of regions 8, 9, and 10. The plane normal direction
and the biaxial elastic modulus for each region were listed in
Table I. It was found that the regions 5 and 7 at TJ2 and
region 10 at TJ3 had relatively higher biaxial elastic modulus. Although there existed the region 10 with a high elastic
modulus, the void did not occur at the triple junctions. In
order to understand the preferred site of the void, it is necessary to consider the neighborhood regions of the high elastic modulus region. It was already known that from the TJ1,
the void also happened at the neighborhood regions regions
3 and 4 as well as the region 1. It was noted that the region
3 had a rather high elastic modulus and faced the region 1 by
a grain boundary. Therefore, it can be surmised that the void
was initiated at the grain boundary between the regions 1 and
3. In addition, the void was also propagated to the region 4
with the highest elastic modulus because the region 1 as the
front side of the region 4 for the TJ1 was fully voided. It was
found that the void was not be propagated into the region 2
with relatively low biaxial elastic modulus. In case of the
TJ2, it was found that the region 5 with high elastic modulus
only faced the regions 6 and 8 with low elastic modulus and
did not face the region 7 with high elastic modulus. The
regions 5 and 7 with high elastic modulus did not face each
other. In case of the TJ3, the regions 8 and 9 had low elastic
modulus and the region 10 with the highest elastic modulus
faced the regions 8 and 9. From these experimental results, it
could be concluded that the void could be generated at the
triple junction which consisted of at least two regions with

TABLE I. Miller indices for each region and the biaxial elastic modulus calculated from the measured orientation.
Region
Miller index
Biaxial modulus
Remark

10

9 4 3
172

17 3 1
122

20 7 6
155

7 5 4
235

7 5 4
235

17 3 1
122

13 7 5
192

3 1 0
137

5 1 1
130

7 6 5
254

Void: TJ1 14

Unvoid: TJ2 58, TJ3 810

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Appl. Phys. Lett. 92, 141917 2008

Lee et al.
TABLE II. Miller indices and the calculated biaxial elastic modulus for each region.
Region
Miller index
Biaxial modulus

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

9 4 3
172

17 3 1
122

20 7 6
155

7 5 4
235

7 5 4
235

17 3 1
122

13 7 5
192

3 1 0
137

Void:TJ4 1115

Remark

Unvoid: TJ5 1618

high biaxial elastic modulus. This result was also confirmed

in the other case of a large void, as shown in Fig. 3b. The
TJ4 of a voided triple junction consisted of the regions 11,
12, 13, and 14, and the TJ4 was a quadruple junction of two
grain boundaries, one 9 coincidence site lattice CSL grain
boundary and one 3 CSL twin boundary. 9 CSL grain
boundaries were marked in red line. The 3 boundary forms
by the rotation through 60 about the axis of 111 and the
9 CSL grain boundary represents a relationship between a
grain and the grain performed by double transformations of
the 3 twin rotation.9 The void mainly happened to regions
11 and 12. The regions 11 and 12 in Table II had high biaxial
elastic modulus and faced each other. Although the region 14
had the highest biaxial elastic modulus among four regions,
the stress of the region 14 may be relaxed with the neighborhood regions of the regions 13 and 15 with low biaxial elastic modulus. Therefore, the void did not occur at the region
14. As a case of the unvoided triple junction, the TJ5 in
Fig. 3b consisted of regions 16, 17, and 18. Although the
region 18 had high biaxial elastic modulus, the region 18
faced regions 16 and 17 with low biaxial elastic modulus.
Therefore, the void was not generated at the TJ5. In order to
confirm the voiding tendency with more cases, larger area
was investigated near the large void, as shown in Fig. 1. The
six triple junctions in Fig. 3d and the biaxial elastic modulus for each region were listed in Table III. It was difficult to
measure the crystallographic orientations of three voided regions because of small size. However, it was found out that
the voids happened at the triple junctions with at least two
high elastic modulus regions and the void did not happened
at the triple junctions with only one high biaxial modulus
region. These results agreed well with the previous voiding
tendency.
Based on the experimental results, the characteristics of
crystalline microstructure for causing the SIV are summarized as follows. Firstly, from the crystallographic investigation of the individual voided region, it was found out that the
voided region is not a single grain with high biaxial elastic
modulus but a pair of grains with high biaxial elastic modulus. Spolenak et al. reported that through the investigation of
Al thin film, in a single grain, the stress of the side contacted
with a high stress grain is higher than that of the side conTABLE III. Miller indices and the calculated biaxial elastic moduli for the
regions of each triple junction.
Triple junction

Biaxial moduli

Remark

TJ6
TJ7
TJ8
TJ9
TJ10
TJ11

206,
206,
168,
172,
247,
234,

Unvoid
Unvoid
Void
Unvoid
Void
Void

141,
141,
165,
148,
215,
228,

130
130
143
117
155
215

tacted with a low stress grain.10 In other words, the stress

distribution of a single grain was influenced by its neighborhood grains. These results agree well with the previous experimental investigation that the void happened well at a
grain boundary where two grains with high biaxial elastic
modulus faced each other. Secondly, the void mainly happened at the triple junction of grain boundaries. If we assume
that the triple junction energy consists of local bonding disorder and strain energy,11 it can be intuitively expected that
the energy of the triple junction of grain boundaries is rather
higher than that of the triple junction of grain boundary and
twin boundary because the twin boundary causes less local
bonding disorder and strain energy than the grain boundary
does. Therefore, it was thought that a void could be easily
generated at the triple junction of grain boundaries.
In summary, in order to discuss the influence of the crystalline microstructure on the stress-induced voiding in copper
interconnect, two factors must be considered. One is thermal
stress and the other is grain boundary. The thermal stress is
influenced by the elastic anisotropy of each grain in the copper films as well as the interconnection structure of line and
via patterns. In addition, it was found that the void frequently
happened at the triple junction of grain boundaries. Conclusively, the 100 texture film with low biaxial elastic moduli
and the suppression of the triple junction of grain boundaries
were expected to have good resistance for the SIV.
This work was supported by the Korea Science and Engineering Foundation KOSEF grant funded by the Korea
government MOST R0A-2007-000-10014-0.
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