On the Origins of Near-Surface Stresses in Silicon around Cu-filled and CNT-filled Through Silicon Vias

Abstract: Micro-Raman spectroscopy was employed to study the near-surface stress distributions and origins in Si around through silicon vias (TSVs) at both room temperature and elevated temperatures for Cu-filled and CNT-filled TSV samples. From the observations, we proved that the stresses near TSVs are mainly from two sources: 1) pre-existing stress before via filling, and 2) coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE) mismatch-induced stress. CTE-mismatch-induced stress is shown to dominate the compressive regime of the near-surface stress distribution around Cu-filled TSV structures, while pre-existing stress dominates the full range of the stress distribution in the CNT-filled TSV structures. Once the pre-existing stress is minimized, the total stress around CNT-filled TSVs can be minimized accordingly. Therefore, compared to Cu-filled TSVs, CNT-filled TSVs hold the potential to circumvent the hassle of stress-aware circuit layout and to solve the stress-related reliability issues.