Electrochemical reduction of surface metal oxides
AssigneeApplied Materials, Inc.
InventorsYoon Ah Shin, Bencherki Mebarki, Joung Joo Lee, Xianmin Tang, Thai Cheng Chua, Christian W. Valencia
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Abstract
Embodiments of the disclosure relate to methods for reducing metal oxide layers to pure metal using microwave radiation. Specific embodiments provide methods of reducing a native metal oxide on a metal interconnect within a substrate feature comprising dielectric sidewalls. In some embodiments, surrounding dielectric materials are undamaged by the disclosed processes.
Claims20
A method of reducing a surface metal oxide layer, the method comprising exposing the metal oxide layer on a metal material to microwave radiation.
A method of reducing molybdenum oxide, the method comprising exposing a substrate surface having at least one feature therein to microwave radiation to reduce a molybdenum oxide layer on a molybdenum metal material, the at least one feature extending a depth from the substrate surface to a bottom comprising the molybdenum oxide layer and having two sidewalls comprising a low-k dielectric.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.