The R.F. Bunshah Award and ICMCTF Lecture was established by the Advanced Surface Science Engineering Division (ASED) of the AVS in 2006. Professor Bunshah founded the ICMCTF in 1974 and was a pioneer in physical vapor deposition. The award is to acknowledge the outstanding research or technological innovation in areas of interest to ASED with emphasis on the fields of surface engineering, thin films, and related topics by a scientist or engineer.

The ASED is pleased to announce this year's recipient of the R.F. Bunshah Award, Dr. Stephen M. Rossnagel.  Dr. Rossnagel has been a Research Staff Member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research  Center in Yorktown Heights, New York since 1983. His work centers on materials and process technology for interconnect and packaging applications, based mostly on PVD and ALD. The most recent work has focused on ultra-thin films. He has been instrumental in various innovations in sputtering, including inventing hollow cathode-enhanced magnetrons and collimated sputtering, understanding gas rarefaction, the development of ionized magnetron sputtering, or I-PVD (1990s) and more recently, plasma-enhanced ALD (2000-). Steve was awarded the AVS Peter Mark Memorial Award  in 1990 for the early magnetron work, and was made an AVS Fellow in 1994. Prior to IBM, Steve was at Penn State University (B.S. and M.S.) followed by work at Princeton with plasma-surface interactions. He returned to graduate school at Colorado State University, receiving his Ph.D. in 1982.  Steve has published more than 145 papers and chapters, been awarded 20 patents, and edited seven books. Steve is an editor of the Noyes Materials Science Series and of the Physics of Thin Films Series (Academic). He has served as an Associate Editor and Head of the Editorial Board for JVST.  Steve was the Chair of the 1996 AVS Annual Symposium and was responsible for the upgrade to a fully electronic abstract submission database and program system. He was Chair of the Publications Committee overseeing JVST from 1991-1995, in which time he instituted the switch to CD-ROM publishing, a full electronic page, and other various improvements. He has served as a member of the Board of Directors (1991-1992), the Long Range Planning Committee (1992-1996, 2001-present; Chair from 2001-2003) and has also been active in various division committees, serving as PSTD Chair in 1990 and on the Executive Committee of the Thin Films Division for the past several years.  Steve was the Program Chair of the 1990 ICMC and ICTF. He joined AVS as a student in the mid-1970’s, served as AVS President in 1999 and is now the Treasurer of the AVS.  

ABSTRACT 

The Evolution of Sputter Deposition in Semiconductor Processing 
Semiconductor manufacturing can be characterized by three distinct eras, based on the underlying integration. The earliest era was “lift-off” in which metal films were evaporated onto photoresist masks which were then removed along with the unwanted film. The second era was Reactive Ion Etching (RIE) based, where planar, sputtered metal films were subtractively etched by a reactive plasma through a mask. The third is damascene: filling imbedded trenches in dielectric using Cu plating followed by chemical-mechanical-polishing.  Evaporation dominated the lift-off era. Magnetron sputtering was the key in RIE-metallization patterning. However, early in the damascene era (1985 at IBM), sputter deposition was deemed obsolete due to the nature of the depositing flux, leading to significant work in the industry with chemical vapor deposition technologies. Over the past 20+ years, magnetron sputtering has evolved through several major steps, including low pressure operation, collimation, metal ionization, directional deposition and resputtering, and has been used in all Damascene generations. Currently, sputter deposition remains a key step  in what is now the 7^th damascene generation; the so-called 32nm node, and is used for silicides as well as liner-seed layers for over 12 levels of interconnects.  The story of sputter deposition for semiconductor manufacturing, which continues to evolve,  includes contributions from academics, the IC manufacturers  and tool suppliers. Even though the 22nm and 15nm nodes look very challenging for magnetron sputter deposition, new understanding of materials and process interactions makes sputtering look promising for yet another generation or two.   

** Please plan to attend the ICMCTF Awards Convocation and Lecture on Wednesday at 5:30 pm. During this event, the ASED will honor the recipients of 2nd Annual ICMCTF Graduate Student Awards. At 7:30 pm, there is an Awards Reception.