Reliability tests of electroless barriers against copper diffusion under bias-temperature stress with n- and p-type substrates

To investigate the similarity and difference of substrate conduction type in the time-dependent dielectric breakdown (TDDB) tests for the barrier integrity against Cu diffusion under bias-temperature stress (BTS), the TDDB reliability of electroless NiB and CoWP/NiB was determined by metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) structures on n-type Si (n-Si) substrates, and the test results were compared with those using p-type Si (p-Si) substrates. The TDDB results and mechanism were observed to be qualitatively the same as Cu diffusion for both conduction types. However, the TDDB lifetime using p-Si was found to be potentially shorter because of the reverse bias conditions than that using n-Si under the forward bias conditions.