International Business Machines Corporation

Other

Kabushiki Kaisha Toshiba

Maria Ronay

Chenting Lin

Florian Schnabel

Lawrence Alfred Clevenger

Kenneth Parker Rodbell

Tetsuo Matsuda

Jeremy K Stephens

Roy Charles Iggulden

Karl E Boggs

Horatio Seymour Wildman

Stefan Weber

Robert Ploessl

Ernst-Eberhard Latta

Gabor Michels

Joachim F Nuetzel

Alloys of silver and an alloying element that diffuses to the surface of the high conductivity metal and is oxidizable to form an alloying element oxide such as beryllium are provided along with electronic structures employing the alloys and methods of fabrication.

Self-encapsulated silver alloys for interconnects

Polishing rate selectivity is increased by providing a polyelectrolyte in the polishing slurry. The polishing selectivity of silicon oxide to silicon nitride is enhanced by using an anionic polyelectrolyte. The polishing selectivity of metals to silicon oxide, silicon nitride and/or silicon oxynitride is increased by using a cationic polyelectrolyte.

Selective polishing with slurries containing polyelectrolytes

A sliding double hung window structure allows a window opening to be fully exposed to the external environment in an open position, with casements or windows being stored out of sight, and not in the opening. The window structure includes two casements or sashes balanced by suspended counterweights and guided by pins in guiding grooves in the two vertical sides of a frame of the window structure. In the closed position, the casements are located in the same plane, one on top of the other. When fully opened, a breast cavity under the window opening receives the two casements. The guiding grooves include guiding grooves in the window opening and in the breast cavity.

Sliding window structure with sash guiding tracks

Slurry compositions comprising abrasive particles and solid lubricant particles are useful for planarizing surfaces, and preventing delamination and scratches.

Polishing compositions and use thereof

A method of enriching the surface of a substrate with a solute material that was originally dissolved in the substrate material, to yield a uniform dispersion of the solute material at the substrate surface. The method generally entails the use of a solvent material that is more reactive than the solute material to a chosen reactive agent. The surface of the substrate is reacted with the reactive agent to preferentially form a reaction compound of the solvent material at the surface of the substrate. As the compound layer develops, the solute material segregates or diffuses out of the compound layer and into the underlying substrate, such that the region of the substrate nearest the compound layer becomes enriched with the solute material. At least a portion of the compound layer is then removed without removing the underlying enriched region of the substrate. For microcircuit applications, the method can be used to enrich the surface of an aluminum line with elemental copper to improve the electromigration resistance of the line.

Method of forming a solute-enriched layer in a substrate surface and article formed thereby

A slurry containing abrasive particles and a dual-valent rare earth ion or suspension of its colloidal hydroxide is especially useful for polishing surfaces, including those used in microelectronics. A suspension of a colloidal dual-valent rare earth hydroxide is especially useful for polishing silica.

Dual-valent rare earth additives to polishing slurries

A liquid material jetted from a nozzle is supplied onto a surface of the semiconductor substrate with use of an ink-jet mechanism comprising a liquid material receiving section, a driving section and a nozzle section. Since a film material (liquid material) is supplied by an ink-jet method, not only the film material only be supplied to a desired region of the semiconductor substrate surface and a supply to an unnecessary region is prevented, but also a variation of a film thickness comes not to be dependent on a pattern on the semiconductor substrate. Therefore, in forming a thin film on a semiconductor substrate, a thin film formation is realized so that utilization efficiency of a film material is increased with reduction in loss thereof and a variation of a thickness of the film formed is not influenced by a pattern on the semiconductor substrate.

Apparatus and method for forming thin film using ink-jet mechanism

A method of forming metal lines in a patterned dielectric layer. First, a thin (50 .ANG.-500 .ANG.) metal layer of a group VB metal, preferably niobium, is formed on a patterned dielectric layer. Next, an aluminum layer or an aluminum alloy layer is formed on the thin niobium layer. The aluminum layer is preferably formed by depositing a first thickness of collimated aluminum at low temperature followed by high temperature deposition of an equal thickness of aluminum. The aluminum layer is Chem-Mech polished (CMP) with an oxidizing acidic colloidal alumina slurry to expose and oxidize the thin niobium liner which acts as a polish stop. Then, the exposed thin niobium liner is removed using CMP. Alternatively, instead of niobium, the liner may be a thin layer of a group VB metal or an alloy thereof.

Method of forming conductive lines on a semiconductor wafer

The method of polishing metal layers on wafers comprises the steps of: providing indicator areas on said wafer, said indicator areas having combinations of line widths and pattern factors violating existing ground rules of metal lines thereby said indicator areas being dished out during said polishing using a chemical-mechanical polisher to polish the metal layers to remove material therefrom, inspecting indicator areas on the wafer to determine an amount of material removed from said areas, and adjusting the operation of the chemical-mechanical polisher in response to the inspection of the indicator areas. The indicator areas may include macroblocks comprised of a multitude of individual blocks. The wafer may be inspected by optically identifying the polishing state of to blocks in the macroblock. Additionally, the process may be automated for mass production. A feedback loop to the polisher can be formed where data from optical inspection of macroblocks on a polished wafer can be immediately fed back to the polisher in order to adjust process parameters.

CMP process using indicator areas to determine endpoint

A surface such as that of a semiconductor wafer is cleaned by contacting the surface with a cleaning composition containing a polyelectrolyte.

Method for cleaning a surface

A slurry containing abrasive particles and exhibiting normal stress effects. The slurry further contains non-polishing particles resulting in reduced polishing rate at recesses, while the abrasive particles maintain high polish rates at elevations. This leads to improved planarization.

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Briarcliff Manor, NY, United States of America

Maria Ronay