| The aim of this thesis is to investigate the optical chemical and structural properties of ultra-thin TaN and TaSiN diffusion barriers. All different sets of thin film coatings were deposited on polished Si(100) wafers via unbalanced reactive magnetron sputtering technique and studied by means of X-ray Diffraction, Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy, Time-of-Flight Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry, Auger Electron Spectroscopy, and Spectroscopic Ellipsometry.; Real-time spectroscopic ellipsometry (RTSE) will be utilized as a tool to understand the growth process of these materials, and to monitor their thermal stability in real time. RTSE data was simulated using the Drude-Lorentz model to obtain information about the growth mechanism and the conduction electron transport properties for these structures. The films were annealed up to 800°C and the diffusion of copper into silicon was evaluated by monitoring changes in the optical properties of the bilayers. |
