Patent ID: 8623468

Claim:
A method of fabricating a metal hard mask, the method comprising: flowing at least one metal reactant gas into a reaction chamber configured to perform chemical vapor deposition (CVD), wherein the at least one metal reactant gas is selected from the group consisting of a tantalum-halogen gas, a tantalum-organic gas, a titanium-halogen gas, and a titanium-organic gas; applying a first radio frequency (RF) power between a first electrode and a second electrode in the reaction chamber to deposit a hard mask metal layer by CVD using the at least one metal reactant gas; stopping flow of the at least one metal reactant gas into the reaction chamber; after stopping the flow of the at least one metal reactant gas, applying a second RF power, which is different than the first RF power, between the two electrodes in the reaction chamber to treat the hard mask metal layer with a plasma formed from a carrier gas.