Koji Mishima

Interplay Between Copper Electroplating and Chemical Mechanical Planarization

The introduction of Chemical Mechanical Polishing (CMP) into semiconductor device processing brought a significant need for wet chemistry research and development in this industry. With the transition from aluminum to copper for advanced interconnect metallization came a tremendous amount of electrochemical research and process development towards a production worthy copper CMP process capable of meeting the stringent specifications of dual damascene integration.In addition, the dual damascene integration scheme introduced copper deposition challenges that brought significant activity in developing another wet chemistry process, electroplating. These two sequential, chemical processes have been shown to have significant interaction that has created significant challenges in process integration.

A novel compact ECD tool for ULSI Cu metallization

A novel compact ECD (Electro chemical Deposition) tool was designed and developed for Cu multi-level interconnection. The design enables the entire plating process (i.e., pre-processing, electro-chemical deposition, cleaning, and drying processed wafers) to be performed using a single module, by which means optimum Raw Process Time, good uptime and low COO can be achieved The merit of the unique design using a porous ceramic presented here are non-uniformity improvement, edge profile control, and black-film protection.