Effect of line width on electromigration of textured pure aluminum films

Three conditions of pure aluminum films were deposited, patterned into electromigration test structures, and annealed at 400°C for 1 hour. The grain size distribution was essentially the same for all conditions, but the textures were substantially different. Electromigration failure distributions were developed at 225°C and 1 MA/cm2 for line widths of both 1.8 µm and 0.5 µm. Three conditions were tested at the wider line width while the strongest and weakest textures were evaluated in the narrow line width. Texture exerts a dominant effect at the wider line width where the lines are polycrystalline. The values of t50 increase as texture becomes stronger although σ varies from <0.5 for strong textures to >1 for a bimodal failure distribution in the weakest texture. In the narrow lines, the texture effect is substantially reduced, and the failure distributions are bimodal with a few early fails followed by a monomodal distribution characterized by a low σ. The electromigration behavior is discussed in terms of both texture and the line width to grain size ratio.