Challenges and Opportunities for Electrochemical Processing in Microelectronics

Electrochemical deposition processes have become increasingly accepted in mainstream semiconductor and microelectronic processing over the last four decades. The most commonly discussed process is copper deposition for damascene interconnect manufacturing, but plating has also been used extensively for depositing metal layers in thin film recording heads, depositing solder alloys for flip chip bumps and for depositing gold conductors in III-V semiconductor devices. There are many other opportunities to utilize electrochemical processes in microelectronic manufacturing. This overview discusses some of the current development direction of processes currently in use, as well as some opportunities for implementing additional electrochemical processes in semiconductor processing.