Focussing and defocussing effects at radio frequency glow discharge optical emission spectroscopy analyses of thin films with partly nonconductive components

Abstract

Abstract The application of radio frequency glow discharge optical emission spectroscopy for the investigation of the stability of different diffusion barriers for microelectronic applications against thermal diffusion of Cu is presented. Difficulties in the interpretation of the glow discharge results are overcome by performing an additional special experiment, where conductive and nonconductive parts are sputtered intentionally at the same time. As a consequence of the investigations, care must be taken, if glow discharge spectrometry is applied to samples with conductive and nonconductive components.