Abstract
Deformation of Copper (Cu) interconnects with various bind of gaps during thermal treatment such as annealing at 350℃ were investigated using the finite element analysis method. It is found that Cu interconnects with air gaps at infra-level is susceptible in terms of the thermal expansion. In addition, dummy Cu metals and its optimized arrangement at each Cu interconnect layers would be essential in order to avoid the deformation of Low-k dielectric at via layer in the large area without Cu interconnects.
