Talk:Ruthenium

• Chemistry of precious metals by Simon Cotton
• Elements of Metallurgy and Engineering Alloys by F. C. Campbell
• The radiochemistry of ruthenium by Edward I. Wyatt, Robert R. Rickard
• Electronic Materials Handbook by Merrill L. Minges
• doi:10.1007/BF00701448 An evaluation of some commercial thick film resistor materials for strain gauges

We can do better than the following. Readers come to this overview of an entire element to get a sense of reality not promises."Ruthenium has been suggested as a material that could beneficially replace other metals and silicides in microelectronics components. Ruthenium tetroxide (RuO₄) is highly volatile, as is ruthenium trioxide (RuO₃) (IT IS NOT).^[1] By oxidizing ruthenium (for example with an oxygen plasma) into the volatile oxides, ruthenium can be easily patterned.^[2][3][4] The properties of the common ruthenium oxides make ruthenium a metal compatible with the semiconductor processing techniques needed to manufacture microelectronics.

To continue miniaturization of microelectronics, new materials are needed as dimensions change. There are three main applications for thin ruthenium films in microelectronics. The first is using thin films of ruthenium as electrodes on both sides of tantalum pentoxide (Ta₂O₅) or barium strontium titanate ((Ba, Sr)TiO₃, also known as BST) in the next generation of three-dimensional dynamic random access memories (DRAMs).^[5][6][7]

Ruthenium thin-film electrodes could also be deposited on top of lead zirconate titanate (Pb(Zr_xTi_1−x)O₃, also known as PZT) in another kind of RAM, ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM).^[8][9] Platinum has been used as the electrodes in RAMs in laboratory settings, but it is difficult to pattern. Ruthenium is chemically similar to platinum, preserving the function of the RAMs, but in contrast to Pt patterns easily. The second is using thin ruthenium films as metal gates in p-doped metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistors (p-MOSFETs).^[10] When replacing silicide gates with metal gates in MOSFETs, a key property of the metal is its work function. The work function needs to match the surrounding materials. For p-MOSFETs, the ruthenium work function is the best materials property match with surrounding materials such as HfO₂, HfSiO_x, HfNO_x, and HfSiNO_x, to achieve the desired electrical properties. The third large-scale application for ruthenium films is as a combination adhesion promoter and electroplating seed layer between TaN and Cu in the copper dual damascene process.^{[11][12][13][14][15]} Copper can be directly electroplated onto ruthenium,^[16] in contrast to tantalum nitride. Copper also adheres poorly to TaN, but well to Ru. By depositing a layer of ruthenium on the TaN barrier layer, copper adhesion would be improved and deposition of a copper seed layer would not be necessary.

There are also other suggested uses. In 1990, IBM scientists discovered that a thin layer of ruthenium atoms created a strong anti-parallel coupling between adjacent ferromagnetic layers, stronger than any other nonmagnetic spacer-layer element. Such a ruthenium layer was used in the first giant magnetoresistive read element for hard disk drives. In 2001, IBM announced a three-atom-thick layer of the element ruthenium, informally referred to as "pixie dust", which would allow a quadrupling of the data density of current hard disk drive media.^[17]"--Smokefoot (talk) 21:15, 17 January 2022 (UTC)