Effect of temperature on incubation time for spontaneous morphology change in electrodeposited copper metallization

A systematic investigation of the effect of annealing time and temperature on the incubation period for spontaneous morphology change (SMC) in electrodeposited copper metallization is reported. The incubation time is greatly reduced at higher temperatures. At each temperature, the remaining incubation time at room temperature was found to decrease approximately linearly with increasing annealing time. An Arhennius plot of the measured rates of decrease showed good linearity and yielded a value of 0.48 eV for the activation energy. This is consistent with a vacancy diffusion mechanism for the process occurring during the incubation period and supports our proposed mechanism for SMC.