A conducting material comprising: a conducting core region comprising copper and from 0.001 atomic percent to 0.6 atomic percent of one or more metals selected from iridium, osmium and rhenium; and an interfacial region. The interfacial region comprises at least 80 atomic percent or greater of the one or more metals. The invention is also directed to a method of making a conducting material comprising: providing an underlayer; contacting the underlayer with a seed layer, the seed layer comprising copper and one or more metals selected from iridium, osmium and rhenium; depositing a conducting layer comprising copper on the seed layer, and annealing the conducting layer at a temperature sufficient to cause grain growth in the conducting layer, yet minimize the migration of the one or more alloy metals from the seed layer to the conducting layer. The method further comprises polishing the conducting layer to provide a polished copper surface material, and annealing the polished copper surface material at a temperature to cause migration of the one or more metals from the seed layer to the polished surface to provide an interfacial region in contact with a copper conductor core region. The interfacial region and the copper conductor core region comprise the one or more metals.