the main current carrying copper material formed onto the alloy seed layers if this were to happen the system may not be viable an exemplary alloy is ta and copper with the ta concentration approximately 5 to 30 at a preferred alloy may be 10 to 20 at ta in copper a preferred method of deposition of the seed alloy is pvd or ipvd ionized pvd as developed by applied materials and others the sputtering parameters may be adjusted to maximize edge coverage over bottom coverage the films may also be applied by cvd finally the bulk of the copper based interconnected is formed onto the seed layer and planarized using cmp as described in the first embodiment the bulk copper is typically electroplated an alternate embodiment for the metal cap layer over copper is now disclosed this barrier in its more robust form should both firmly bond to both copper and the overlying oxide insulation or dielectric and offer passive diffusion barrier characteristics as well an exemplary system is the following material stack plated copper displacement plated silver followed by displacement palladium selective electroless plated ru light oxidation this system requires no overlying dielectric diffusion barrier thus the ild dielectric constant is minimized fig7 and 8 show the expected metallurgy of the system upon annealing a copper interconnect surface such as that of copper region 3 prior to application of film 5 is represented in fig7 as electroplated copper 35 approximately 20 u00e5 of immersion silver 36 approximately 10 u00e5 of immersion palladium 37 and approximately 100 u00e5 of electroless ru 38 are applied.