Simultaneous formation of liner and metal conductor

Abstract

An advanced metal conductor structure and a method for constructing the structure are described. A method for fabricating an advanced metal conductor structure provides a conductive line pattern including a set of conductive line trenches in a dielectric layer. Each conductive line trench of the conductive line pattern has parallel vertical sidewalls and a horizontal bottom. A surface treatment of the dielectric layer is performed. The surface treatment produces an element enriched surface layer in which a concentration of a selected element in a surface portion of the parallel sidewalls and horizontal bottoms of the conductive line trenches is increased. A metal layer is deposited on the element enriched surface layer. A thermal anneal process is then performed which simultaneously reflows the metal layer to fill the conductive line trenches and causes a chemical change at interfaces of the metal layer and the element enriched surface layer creating a liner which is an alloy of the metal and selected element. Another aspect of the invention is a device which is created by the method.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.