The present invention relates to a bilayer cap structure for interconnect
structures that comprise copper metallization or other conductive
metallization. Such bilayer cap structure includes a first cap layer
formed by an unbiased high density plasma (HDP) chemical vapor deposition
process, and a second cap layer over the first cap layer, where the
second cap layer is formed by a biased high density plasma (bHDP)
chemical vapor deposition process. During the bHDP chemical vapor
deposition process, a low AC bias power is applied to the substrate to
increase the ion bombardment on the substrate surface and to induce
resputtering of the capping material, thereby forming a seamless second
cap layer with excellent reactive ion etching (RIE) selectivity.