Fabrication and Characterization of Thin Metal Films Deposited by Electroless Plating with Organic Additives for Electrical Circuits Applications

In our work, we studied thin nickel films deposited by electroless plating for use as a barrier and seed layer in the through-silicon vias (TSV) technology. El-Ni coatings were deposited on a copper substrate from the original electrolyte and with the use of various concentrations of organic additives in the composition of the electrolyte. The surface morphology, crystal state, and phase composition of the deposited coatings were studied by SEM, AFM, and XRD methods. The El-Ni coating deposited without the use of an organic additive has an irregular topography with rare phenocrysts of globular formations of hemispherical shape and a root mean square roughness value of 13.62 nm. The phosphorus concentration in the coating is 9.78 wt.%. According to the results of the X-ray diffraction studies of El-Ni, the coating deposited without the use of an organic additive has a nanocrystalline structure with an average nickel crystallite size of 2.76 nm. The influence of the organic additive is seen in the smoothening of the samples surface. The root mean square roughness values of the El-Ni sample coatings vary within 2.09–2.70 nm. According to microanalysis data the phosphorus concentration in the developed coatings is ~4.7–6.2 wt.%. The study of the crystalline state of the deposited coatings by X-ray diffraction made it possible to detect two arrays of nanocrystallites in their structure, with average sizes of 4.8–10.3 nm and 1.3–2.6 nm.