Patent ID: 7214610

Claim:
A process producing aluminum-filled contact holes in a wafer, the process using a coating installation that includes a plurality of vacuum-processing chambers that are coupled to one another via at least one transfer chamber with an associated handler for transferring the wafer, the process comprising: forming the contact holes in a dielectric layer; depositing a barrier layer over the wafer and in the contact holes; cooling the wafer to ambient temperature, wherein cooling the wafer comprises cooling the wafer while the wafer is being transferred in the transfer chamber; cold aluminum PVD coating the wafer, the coating being carried out in a PVD-aluminum ESC chamber; heating the wafer to a temperature of less than about 450° C.; and carrying out a hot aluminum PVD deposition in the PVD-aluminum ESC chamber, wherein the hot aluminum PVD deposition step is performed after the cold aluminum PVD coating step without intervening deposition steps and wherein the hot aluminum deposition step fills the contact holes.