Improvement of Surface Morphology of Aluminum Thin Films Grown by Metallorganic Chemical Vapor Deposition

Abstract

Surface morphology of aluminum thin films grown by metallorganic chemical vapor deposition has been improved by growing aluminum/titanium nitride multilayers. When the aluminum films were deposited continuously, the reflectance vs. deposition thickness curves showed a maximum reflectance at the completion of coalescence of islands, and then showed a gradual decay with increasing aluminum thickness because of nonuniform grain growth. By inserting 1 nm titanium nitride layer grown by atomic layer deposition on aluminum layer at the maximum reflectance, the reflectance was recovered again to the peak reflectance like a sinusoid waveform. Therefore, without considerable loss of electrical conductivity surface smoothness of aluminum films has been able to be achieved by repeating the aluminum/titanium nitride multilayer depositions. (C) 2000 The Electrochemical Society. S1099-0062(99)10-085-3. All rights reserved.