Electrochemical behavior of copper and cobalt in post-etch cleaning solutions

Cleaning is one of the key steps of the integration of self aligned barriers (SAB) in microelectronic devices for 32 nm technology and below. It is hence important to investigate the impact of different cleaning solutions on the metallic components of SAB, mainly in which concerns their surface stability. In this sense, the electrochemical behavior of copper and cobalt was studied under potentiodynamic conditions in different aqueous solutions of glycolic acid (GA) with and without benzotriazole (BTA) inhibitor. It has been observed that the presence of glycolic acid induces a monotonic increase of copper corrosion and a slight decrease in the case of cobalt. The cobalt dissolution remains nonetheless very active and is shown to be governed by oxygen reduction reaction. The addition of BTA, a well-known corrosion inhibitor for copper has shown to be also effective in the case of Co surfaces, with a ca 15-fold reduction of the intrinsic Co corrosion current density. The possibility of galvanic coupling between both metals, supposed to enhance the Co dissolution, has also been qualitatively investigated and seems not to be a determinant factor in these conditions.