A reliability study of titanium silicide lines using micro-Raman spectroscopy and emission microscopy

Micro-Raman spectroscopy and emission microscopy are used to study the crystallographic phase of 0.25 μm wide TiSi₂ lines. It is demonstrated for the first time that emission microscopy allows very fast, simple, non-destructive mapping of the local phase of TiSi₂. The results show that there is a direct correlation between the resistance variation of these lines and the local occurrence of the high resistivity C49 phase of TiSi₂ in the lines.