Appeal No. 1999-1655
Application No. 08/722,904
BACKGROUND
The appellant's invention relates to an integrated circuit interconnect. The invention
uses ion implantation and annealing to encapsulate the vertical sidewalls of a clad metal
structure or trench in a dielectric material. An understanding of the invention can be
derived from a reading of exemplary claims 1 and 3, which are reproduced below.
1. A method of encapsulating clad metal structures in an integrated
circuit, comprising the steps of:
(a) providing a partially formed integrated circuit with a clad metal
structure including a first metal structure and a cladding metal on a top
horizontal surface of the first metal; and
(b) implanting dopants into exopsed [sic; exposed] first metal vertical
sidewalls of said clad metal structure to form vertical surface regions of first
metal-dopant mixtures.
3. A method of encapsulating metal structures in an integrated circuit,
comprising the steps of:
(a) providing a partially formed integrated circuit with a dielectric layer
including trenches;
(b) implanting dopants into surface regions of sidewalls of said
trenches;
(c) filling said trences [sic; trenches] with metal to form metal
structures with said dopants adjacent said metal structures; and
(d) after said filling with metal, annealing said metal structure and
dielectric with said implanted dopants to form metal surface regions of
metal-dopant compounds.
2
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