Highly Scaled Ruthenium Interconnects

Ruthenium has emerged as a promising candidate to substitute Cu as the interconnect metallization in future technology nodes. Here, we demonstrate area scaling of Ru wires down to cross-sectional areas of 33 nm(2) through subtractive patterning by using a metal-spacer patterning technique. The wires were characterized by physical as well as electrical measurements and demonstrate low resistivity, between 20 and 35 mu Omega cm for cross-sectional areas between 175 and 33 nm(2).