Brush Wellman, Inc.

Materion Brush Inc.

William J Bishop

David Krus, Jr

Anatoly A Offengenden

Noel M Brady

Walter R Cribb

A continuously cast copper ingot is made by a procedure in which turbulence is imparted to the metal/solid interface during the casting operation. The ingot is then hot worked to form a billet having a smaller average grain size and a larger diameter than possible in the past. The billet is especially useful for making electroplating anodes used in the damascene process for making copper interconnects in silicon wafers.

Manufacture of fine-grained electroplating anodes

Large sections of solution annealed, precipitation hardenable alloys which are resistant to internal cracking yet fully hardenable can be produced if, during rapid quenching, the temperature of the section is allowed to stabilize immediately above the alloy's solvus temperature before the section is rapidly quenched. Preferably, the temperature of the section is allowed to stabilize a second time, this time at an elevated temperature not so high that significant phase changes occur, before the section is cooled to ambient.

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Amherst, OH, United States of America

William J Bishop