Electron Scattering at Grain Boundaries in Tungsten Thin Films

Tungsten (W) is recently gaining attention as a potential candidate to replace Cu in semiconductor metallization due to its expected improvement in material reliability and reduced resistivity size effect. In this study, the impact of electron scattering at grain boundaries in a polycrystalline W thin film was investigated. Two nominally 300 nm-thick films, a (110)-oriented single crystal film and a (110)-textured polycrystalline W film, were prepared onto (11-20) Al2O3 substrate and thermally oxidized Si substrate, respectively in identical fabrication conditions. The lateral grain size for the polycrystalline film was determined to be $119{\pm}7nm$ by TEM-based orientation mapping technique. The film thickness was chosen to significantly exceed the electron mean free path in W (16.1 and 77.7 nm at 293 and 4.2 K, respectively), which allows the impact of surface scattering on film resistivity to be negligible. Then, the difference in the resistivity of the two films can be attributed to grain boundary scattering. quantitative analyses were performed by employing the Mayadas-Shatzkes (MS) model, where the grain boundary reflection coefficient was determined to be $0.42{\pm}0.02$ and $0.40{\pm}0.02$ at 293 K and 4.2 K, respectively.