Interfacial Fracture Toughness Measurement of a Ti/Si Interface

Abstract

Titanium adhesive layers are commonly used in microelectronic and MEMS applications to help improve the adhesion of other metal layers to a silicon substrate. Such Ti/Si interfaces could potentially delaminate under externally applied mechanical loads, thermally induced stresses, or process-induced intrinsic stresses or a combination of these different loads. In order to design against delamination, knowledge of the interfacial fracture toughness of the Ti/Si interface is necessary. However, interfacial fracture toughness data for such interfaces is not widely available in the open literature, in part due to the difficulty in measuring the strength of thin film interfaces. The Modified Decohesion Test (MDT), a new test developed by the authors, has been used to characterize the mode mix dependent interfacial fracture toughness of a Ti/Si interface. In this approach, a highly stressed super layer is used to drive delamination and generate any mode mix at the crack tip. MDT uses the change in crack surface area to vary the available energy per unit area for crack growth and thus to bound the interfacial fracture toughness. Therefore, this technique uses a single sample to measure the interfacial fracture toughness. Since the deformations remain elastic, a mechanics-based solution can be used to correlate test parameters to the energy release rate. Common IC fabrication techniques are used to prepare the sample and execute the test, thereby making the test compatible with current microelectronic or MEMS facilities. Using the MDT, interfacial fracture toughness (Γ) bounds were found for a Ti/Si interface at three mode mixes. At a mode mix of 19.5 deg, 5.97 J/m2≤Γ≤7.87 J/m2, at a mode mix of 23 deg, 9.32 J/m2≤Γ≤10.42 J/m2, and at a mode mix of 30 deg, 12.70 J/m2≤Γ≤17.02 J/m2.