Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Comp. Ltd.

John C-s Wei

Jin-Yuan Lee

Ying-Chen Chao

An-Min Chiang

Kuo-Chin Hsu

The guard ring is a barrier which prevents contaminates from diffusing through a window opening through insulating layers to adjacent semiconductor devices. The guard ring is formed surrounding a window in the insulation layers over a fuse link or an alignment mark. The guard ring is an annular metal ring that penetrates two or more insulating layers and contacts the substrate.

Method of forming contamination guard ring for semiconductor integrated

A new method of metal etching using a disposable metal antireflective coating process along with metal dry/wet etching is described. An insulating layer is provided over semiconductor device structures in and on a semiconductor substrate. Openings are made through the insulating layer to the semiconductor substrate and to the semiconductor device structures to be contacted. A barrier metal layer is deposited conformally over the insulating layer and within the openings. A metal layer is deposited over the barrier metal layer. The metal layer is covered with an antireflective coating. A layer of photoresist is coated onto the substrate and patterned to provide a photoresist mask. The antireflective coating, the metal layer and a portion of the barrier metal layer are etched away where the layers are not covered by the photoresist mask. The photoresist mask is removed. The remaining barrier metal layer not covered by the patterned metal layer is etched away whereby all the remaining antireflective coating is also removed completing the metal patterning in the fabrication of the integrated circuit.

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Taipei, Taiwan

John C-s Wei