Integrated circuit barrierless microfluidic channel

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9502325-B2
Application number	US-201615158664-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	May 19, 2016
Priority date	Dec 18, 2014
Publication date	Nov 22, 2016
Grant date	Nov 22, 2016

Abstract

A structure and method for fabricating a continuous cooling channel in the back end of line wiring levels of an integrated circuit (IC) chip is provided. This continuous cooling channel may provide a path for a cooling source such as a fluid pumped from an external fluidic-cooling circulation driver to make physical contact locally with and cool the back end levels within the IC chip that may generate heat as a byproduct of the IC device's routine operations. Such a cooling structure is achieved by removing a horizontal portion of a barrier layer from an intermediate region of an interlevel interconnect structure, selective to a vertical portion of the barrier layer located on a sidewall of the interlevel interconnect structure, using gas cluster ion beam etching as well as removing the bulk conductor by additional means.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. An integrated circuit chip having a continuous cooling channel extending through back end of the line (BEOL) of the chip comprising:
a pair of vertical channel openings extending through two or more dielectric layers in the back end of line of the chip, wherein each vertical channel opening has a bottom and a top;
a horizontal channel opening connecting the pair of vertical channel openings at their bottoms; and
a barrier layer having a vertical portion…

Assignees

• IBM

Inventors

• Clevenger Lawrence A
• Mcgahay Vincent J
• Nag Joyeeta
• Xu Yiheng

Classifications

• H10W20/425

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H10W20/034

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H10W72/00

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H10W40/255

  Electricity · mapped topic

• H10W40/47

  Electricity · mapped topic