Ruthenium Interconnects On Tap

By Katherine Derbyshire - 20 Jun, 2024 - Comments: 0

Chipmakers' focus on new interconnect technology is ramping up as copper's effectiveness continues to diminish, setting the stage for a significant shift that could improve performance and reduce heat at future nodes and in advanced packages. The introduction of copper interconnects in 1997 upended the then-standard tungsten via/aluminum line metallization scheme. Dual damascene integration ... » read more

Interconnects: Criteria For Alternative Metal Benchmarking And Selection (Imec, KU Leuven)

By Technical Paper Link - 19 Jun, 2024 - Comments: 0

A technical paper titled “Selecting Alternative Metals for Advanced Interconnects” was published by researchers at imec and KU Leuven. Abstract “Today, interconnect resistance and reliability are key limiters for the performance of advanced CMOS circuits. As transistor scaling is slowing, interconnect scaling has become the main driver for circuit miniaturization, and interconnect lim... » read more

Sidestepping Lithography In Chip Manufacturing

By Katherine Derbyshire - 23 May, 2024 - Comments: 0

Rising lithography costs, shrinking feature sizes, and the need for an alternative to copper are collectively spurring new interest in area-selective deposition. An extension of atomic layer deposition, ASD seeks to build circuit features from the bottom up, without relying on lithography. Lithography will remain a critical tool for the foreseeable future. But it has long been the most expen... » read more

Backside Power Delivery Gears Up For 2nm Devices

By Laura Peters - 26 Feb, 2024 - Comments: 1

The top three foundries plan to implement backside power delivery as soon as the 2nm node, setting the stage for faster and more efficient switching in chips, reduced routing congestion, and lower noise across multiple metal layers. The benefits of using this approach are significant. By delivering power using slightly fatter, less resistive lines on the backside, rather than inefficient fro... » read more

Analysis Of BEOL Metal Schemes By Process Modeling

By Daebin Yim - 16 Nov, 2023 - Comments: 0

The semiconductor industry has been diligently searching for alternative metal line materials to replace the conventional copper dual damascene scheme, because as interconnect dimensions shrink, the barrier accounts for an increasing fraction of the total line volume. The barrier layer's dimensions cannot be scaled down as quickly as the metal line width (figure 1). Popular barrier materials su... » read more

Etch Processes Push Toward Higher Selectivity, Cost Control

By Laura Peters - 18 May, 2023 - Comments: 0

Plasma etching is perhaps the most essential process in semiconductor manufacturing, and possibly the most complex of all fab operations next to photolithography. Nearly half of all fab steps rely on a plasma, an energetic ionized gas, to do their work. Despite ever-shrinking transistor and memory cells, engineers continue to deliver reliable etch processes. “To sustainably create chips... » read more

Big Changes Ahead In Power Delivery, Materials, And Interconnects

By Laura Peters - 22 Mar, 2023 - Comments: 0

Part one of this forecast looked at evolving transistor architectures and lithography platforms. This report examines revolutions in interconnects and packaging. When it comes to device interconnects, it’s hard to beat copper. Its low resistivity and high reliability have served the industry exceedingly well as both on-chip interconnect and wires between chips. But in logic chips, with int... » read more

How Far Will Copper Interconnects Scale?

By Laura Peters - 15 Dec, 2022 - Comments: 0

As leading chipmakers continue to scale finFETs — and soon nanosheet transistors — to ever-tighter pitches, the smallest metal lines eventually will become untenable using copper with its liner and barrier metals. What comes next, and when, is still to be determined. There are multiple options being explored, each with its own set of tradeoffs. Ever since IBM introduced the industry to c... » read more

Challenges In Backside Power Delivery

By Laura Peters - 17 Nov, 2022 - Comments: 0

One of the key technologies to enable scaling below 3nm involves delivering of power on the backside of a chip. This novel approach enhances signal integrity and reduces routing congestion, but it also creates some new challenges for which today there are no simple solutions. Backside power delivery (BPD) eliminates the need to share interconnect resources between signal and power lines on t... » read more

How To Compare Chips

By Ed Sperling - 15 Sep, 2022 - Comments: 0

Traditional metrics for semiconductors are becoming much less meaningful in the most advanced designs. The number of transistors packed into a square centimeter only matters if they can be utilized, and performance per watt is irrelevant if sufficient power cannot be delivered to all of the transistors. The consensus across the chip industry is that the cost per transistor is rising at each ... » read more

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Knowledge Centers
Entities, people and technologies explored

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eBook: Nearly everything you need to know about memory, including detailed explanations of the different types of memory; how and where these are used today; what's changing, which memories are successful and which ones might be in the future; and the limitations of each memory type.

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