The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Mar. 29, 2016
Filed:
May. 23, 2014
Intermolecular Inc., San Jose, CA (US);
Edwin Adhiprakasha, Mountain View, CA (US);
Sean Barstow, San Jose, CA (US);
Ashish Bodke, San Jose, CA (US);
Zhendong Hong, San Jose, CA (US);
Usha Raghuram, Saratoga, CA (US);
Karthik Ramani, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Vivian Ryan, Berne, NY (US);
Jingang Su, Cupertino, CA (US);
Xunyuan Zhang, Albany, NY (US);
Intermolecular, Inc., San Jose, CA (US);
Abstract
Barrier layers, barrier stacks, and seed layers for small-scale interconnects (e.g., copper) are combinatorially screened using test structures sputtered or co-sputtered through apertures of varying size. Various characteristics (e.g., resistivity, crystalline morphology, surface roughness) related to conductivity, diffusion blocking, and adhesion are measured before and/or after annealing and compared to arrive at materials and process parameters for low diffusion with high conductivity through the interconnect. Example results show that some formulations of tantalum-titanium barriers may replace thicker tantalum/tantalum-nitride stacks, in some cases with a Cu—Mn seed layer between the Ta—Ti and copper.