Superconformal Deposition by Surfactant-Catalyzed Chemical Vapor Deposition

The curvature enhanced accelerator coverage (CEAC) mechanism recently proposed to explain superconformal filling of fine trenches during copper electrodeposition is shown to also explain superconformal filling and roughness evolution during iodine-catalyzed chemical vapor deposition of copper. As with electrodeposition, the coverage of absorbed catalyst changes with surface area during interface evolution. The surface area decreases along the bottoms of submicrometer features, leading to increased coverage, thus increasing local deposition rates and thereby enabling superconformal filling. This result shows that this CEAC mechanism may be generally applied to understand interface evolution in surfactant mediated film growth processes.