Tokyo Electron Limited (TEL) and Ebara Corporation (Ebara) announced today that they have agreed to jointly evaluate the deposition and Chemical Mechanical Polish (CMP) of CVD ruthenium for advanced semiconductor copper interconnect.

As devices shrink, copper interconnect technology faces many challenges, such as maintaining gap-fill capability and low resistance, high reliability wiring capabilities. Ruthenium is one of the promising metallization candidates poised to meet these challenges. Combining Ru with a robust CMP process assures the material attributes are maintained while also providing customers with a complete integration package.

The companies have agreed to jointly evaluate a production-worthy integration solution by combining TEL‘s ruthenium deposition technology and Ebara’s CMP technology. The companies will collaboratively provide integrated technology based on the evaluation.

“By combining and utilizing each company’s technology leadership, we will offer integrated technology to meet advanced copper interconnect requirements”, said Go Okubo, Vice President and General Manager of TEL’s SDBU and TPSBU. “And we will continue to pursue our relationship for further innovation on copper interconnect.”

“The sole solution of conformal and thin as 2nm film deposition of ruthenium is based on this technology and collaboration is indispensable on defect-free CMP planarization technology”, said Manabu Tsujimura, Director and Chief Technology Officer of Ebara. “We both offer true solutions for device scaling with the best technology in the world.”

■About Ebara Corporation
Headquarters: 11-1, Haneda Asahi-cho, Ohta-ku, Tokyo, Japan
Established: 1920
Capital: 61.2 billions of yen (as of April 1, 2010)
Consolidated net sales : 485 billions of yen (FY 2010)
Group employees: 13,800 (as of March 31, 2010)
Representative Director, President : Natsunosuke Yago
Activities: Fluid Machinery & Systems, Environmental Systems and Plants, Vacuum Component, Semiconductor Production Equipment