Characterization of the Nanoscale Microstructure of an Immersion Silver on Sputtered Copper

1 INTRODUCTION Silver and its compounds have received much attention due to their current and potential applica- tions in many areas1, 2]. As a metal with the highest electrical and thermal conductivities, silver was one of the most important noble metals used in electrical industries in the last century. Several decades ago, however, the development of silver application in electronic area seemed not so quick. The fear for some undesirable phenomena involving silver, like “electrochemi…

Characterization of the Nanoscale Microstructure of an Immersion Silver on Sputtered Copper

Silver has grown its attraction of the scientists in microelectronic field recently. Electrochemical deposition of silver onto copper substrates by immersion method has been one of the keen topics. In this study, ethanol was used as the plating solution in which some chemicals were added. The silver deposits were characterized by a field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), an atom force microscope (AFM), a transmission electron microscope (TEM) and a selected area electron diffraction (SAED). It was found that silver immersion using ethanol-based bath has good coverage feature. The highlands of the copper substrate are coated by silver particles whose sizes are around 12 nm, but those sizes at low-lying lands are a little smaller.