Advances in copper metallization technology

Copper metallization is being established in many semiconductor device manufacture processes to replace the standard aluminum metallization. The progress in this area is very rapid. This paper describes the process flow of the new copper metallization process and also the issues related to these new processes. Recent results in copper electroplating technology, film properties, gap filling capability, barrier-seed layer, and Cu CMP will be presented. These results showed that not only are the current problems are being resolved but also the extension of this technology to future device generations looks very promising