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AssigneeNovellus Systems, Inc.
InventorsAnanda Banerji, George Andrew Antonelli, Jennifer O'loughlin, Mandyam Sriram, Bart Van Schravendijk, Seshasayee Varadarajan
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Protective caps residing at an interface between metal lines and dielectric diffusion barrier (or etch stop) layers are used to improve electromigration performance of interconnects. Protective caps are formed by depositing a source layer of dopant-generating material (e.g., material generating B, Al, Ti, etc.) over an exposed copper line, converting the upper portion of the source layer to a passivated layer (e.g., nitride or oxide) while allowing an unmodified portion of a dopant-generating source layer to remain in contact with copper, and, subsequently, allowing the dopant from the unmodified portion of source layer to controllably diffuse into and/or react with copper, thereby forming a thin protective cap within copper line. The cap may contain a solid solution or an alloy of copper with the dopant.
A method for forming a semiconductor device structure, the method comprising:
A semiconductor device comprising a region of dielectric material and a region of copper or copper alloy embedded in the dielectric material, wherein the device further comprises a layer comprising BNx disposed on the layer of dielectric and on the region of copper or copper alloy, and wherein the region of copper or copper alloy further comprises a boron-containing cap at an interface of copper or copper alloy with the layer comprising BNx.
An apparatus for forming a protective cap on or within a metal portion of a partially fabricated semiconductor device, the apparatus comprising:
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.