Evaluating of Adhesion Property of ULSI Interconnect Films by the Surface Acoustic Waves

The technique of surface acoustic waves (SAWs) is a very promising method for determining film properties such as Young's modulus, density and film thickness nondestructively and accurately. The dispersion property of SAWs is also affected largely from the adhesion property of films, which is revealed by the bonding spring assumption described. This SAW method could offer a quantitative evaluation of the film adhesion from the curvature of SAW dispersion lines affected by the normal and shear spring constants. The method is applied to numerically characterize the adhesion property of the typical ultra-large-scale integrated circuit interconnect layered structure of a thin Cu film deposited on the Si substrate as well as a SiO₂ thin film on a Si
substrate.