by Michael Shifrin, Max Gage and Zhebo Chen

As device scaling continues and connections to the transistors become even thinner, traditional tungsten (W) contacts face challenges in their ability to efficiently conduct electrons. Molybdenum (Mo or “Moly”), with its lower electrical resistivity at smaller dimensions, emerges as a promising alternative for next-generation contact applications in both logic and memory devices.  Since contacts form the smallest connections between interconnects and transistors, maintaining low resistance is critical to ensure maximum device performance and efficient power consumption. 

The industry’s gold standard has been Selective W, which lowers contact resistance by 40% compared to conventional W.  Applied’s Selective Mo metallization technology can achieve an additional 15% lower resistance compared to Selective W in the tiniest features, supporting continued device scaling for gate-all-around transistors.

Novelty Often Comes with New and Unknown Challenges

To fully realize the benefits of lower resistivity, optimizing the Moly fill and planarization process is essential to meet strict specifications for material levels, uniformity, and planarization – all of which are critical to final device performance.

Traditionally, overfill, underfill, dishing, and protrusion measurements are obtained either through end-of-line testing or specialized lab analysis. However, both methods have significant drawbacks: they are often too slow, costly, or lack the detail needed to drive effective action. End-of-line tests occur late in the process and cannot pinpoint which specific steps caused a failure. While lab failure analysis can be tied to a particular process step, it is expensive, takes days to complete, and yields only a limited number of data points across the wafer.

One of the main challenges for process engineers is speeding up the optimization of process parameters, which often demands numerous experiments. Accurately characterizing process variations requires identifying signatures and trends across the wafer, necessitating large volumes of data from many “hot spots” – often extending an already lengthy diagnosis process. An effective metrology system should deliver rapid, ad-hoc insights by capturing tens of thousands of on-device samples across the wafer.

Co-optimized Processes and PROVision 10 Accelerate the Learning Curve

By combining Applied’s advanced eBeam process and metrology tools with the Maydan Technology Center’s rapid development environment, a novel Moly contact metrology system was created that leverages the Applied PROVision™ eBeam system. Close collaboration between the process and metrology teams enabled Applied to accelerate learning cycles, generating massive amounts of localized, on-device data in less than an hour with massive eBeam metrology.

During Applied Materials’ SEMICON West Technology Breakfast on October 7, 2025, Michael Chudzik, VP of Technology, outlined the importance of co-optimized technologies to accelerate research and development.  Pairing processes with massive eBeam metrology dramatically compresses learning cycles.