A breakthrough by the US Semiconductor Manufacturing Technology consortium Sematech could bring forward by six months or more the possibility for chip makers to use copper, in place of aluminum, to connect transistors on a silicon chip, thereby overcoming the potential limitations of aluminum as computer processors become ever faster, more powerful and smaller. The non profit-making consortium, which sponsors and conducts research for its US semiconductor manufacturing members, says it has already produced its first copper metalized wafers. It claims this as a significant milestone which should bring forward by at least six months the timescale for the technology to be available to its member companies, Advanced Micro Devices Inc, Digital Equipment Corp, Hewlett-Packard Co, Intel Corp, IBM Corp, Lucent Technologies Inc, Motorola Inc, National Semiconductor Corp, Rockwell International Inc and Texas Instruments Inc. Copper is a much better conductor of electricity than aluminum, which has traditionally been used in wafer fabrication, therefore data will travel even faster through the chip circuitry. With the latest Intel microprocessors cramming 5.5 million transistors onto a single piece of silicon, and the next generation Merced processor due to have probably three times that many, there has been concern in the industry that aluminum simply would not be able to keep up. Companies have been working on using copper in this way for more than ten years, but until recently, it has been too difficult to work with because it fuses with the silicon. However, Sematech has taken different products from its member companies, and come up with a way of getting round the problems. The consortium now believes products to begin the move to copper could be in place in the next six months. However, this is no simple transition. It would take a major investment in new chip fabrication processes and equipment to enable companies to go over to copper. Experts reckon it will still be a year or two before companies are ready to start implementing the new technology, and an Intel spokesman confirmed it was in the company’s timetable to implement copper wiring early in the 21st century.
