Bangalore – Applied Materials, Inc. today introduced a new system that re-engineers the deposition of transistor wiring to significantly reduce electrical resistance, which has become a critical bottleneck to further improvements in chip performance and power.

Chipmakers are using advances in lithography to shrink chips to the 3nm node and beyond. Unfortunately, as the wires become thinner, the electrical resistance increases exponentially, and this reduces chip performance and increases power consumption. If left unchecked, the wiring resistance can fully negate the benefits of more advanced transistors.

Chip wiring is deposited into trenches and vias that are etched into a dielectric material. In the conventional approach, the wiring is deposited using a metal stack that typically includes a barrier layer to prevent the metal from mixing with the dielectric; a liner layer to promote adhesion; a seed layer to facilitate metal fill; and a conductive metal like tungsten or cobalt for the transistor contacts and copper for the interconnect wires. The barriers and liners don’t scale well, so as the trenches and vias shrink, the proportion of space available for conductive metals is reduced; and the smaller the wiring, the higher the electrical resistance