Patent ID: 7214619

Claim:
A method of forming a barrier layer of an integrated circuit using a vacuum chamber of a plasma reactor, comprising: providing a metal target near a ceiling of said vacuum chamber; placing the wafer on a wafer support pedestal facing said metal target near a floor of said vacuum chamber; introducing a process gas into said vacuum chamber; maintaining a target-sputtering plasma at said metal target to produce a stream of principally neutral atoms flowing from said metal target toward said wafer for vapor deposition of metal from said metal target; maintaining a wafer-sputtering plasma near said wafer, by coupling RF source power to said wafer support pedestal at a frequency sufficiently high to excite kinetic electrons in a plasma, to produce a stream of sputtering ions toward said wafer for re-sputtering; and accelerating said stream of sputtering ions in a direction normal to a surface of said wafer by coupling RF bias power to said wafer support pedestal at a frequency sufficiently low to accelerate ions across a plasma sheath near said wafer.