Benefits and Trade-offs in Multi-Level Air Gap Integration

In this paper, two different air gap integration approaches are discussed in detail. Firstly, air gaps can be created using sacrificial materials, which are selectively removed through a capping layer either by wet- or dry-etching or by thermal decomposition. The second class benefits from the non-conformal deposition of different CVD dielectrics, which creates air gaps for narrow spaced lines. The benefit of air gaps in terms of capacitance reduction in multilevel interconnects is well known, therefore the authors will mainly concentrate on the challenges associated with the introduction of air gaps in interconnect systems. It will be shown that interconnect containing air gaps does not suffer more from reliability challenges than interconnects with porous low-k dielectrics. Therefore, air gaps can be considered as a viable option for the 32nm node and beyond.