Method of making integrated circuits using ruthenium and its oxides as a Cu diffusion barrier
AssigneeUniversity of North Texas
InventorsOliver Chyan, Thomas Ponnuswamy
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
The present invention generally relates to methods used for fabricating integrated circuits (“ICs”), using Ruthenium (“Ru”) and its oxides and/or Iridium (“Ir”) and its oxides as the diffusion barrier to contain and control copper (“Cu”) interconnects. The invention also covers ICs incorporating such materials in the diffusion barrier to contain and control the Cu interconnects. The present invention advantageously provides better integration and fabrication of advanced IC chips with sub-micron features.
Claims9
A method of controlling and containing copper diffusion during the integration of copper interconnects during the fabrication of integrated circuits, comprising:
- preparing an inter-level dielectric substrate;
- depositing a layer of Ru on the inter-level dielectric substrate;
- depositing a layer of RuO2 as a diffusion stuffer on the Ru layer;
- repeating the depositing of a layer of Ru and a layer of RuO2 at least once;
- and
- depositing copper on the RuO2 layer, wherein multiple layers of Ru and RuO2 are deposited between the inter-level dielectric substrate and the copper layer.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.