In our previous work we showed that by doping Ru atoms into the top layer of a TaN surface, a single material with both barrier and liner properties can be created. Such a material can be deposited using ALD. Use of a single barrier/liner material frees up volume for Cu in the interconnect and reduces the number of process steps. As part of these studies, we also developed a computationally efficient method for predicting the thin-film morphology of Cu on potential single barrier/liner materials. This is based mainly on the understanding of the forces that drive the growth mechanism of a material.