Industry News

A Revolution in the Abandonment of a New Generation of Semiconductor Conductor Materials

Views : 508
Update time : 2020-08-07 10:02:36

Cobalt: Next-Generation Semiconductor Wires

The invention of chip/integrated circuit/semiconductor is the premise for human to enter the information society. The chip manufacturing industry -- semiconductor industry is the most advanced manufacturing industry in modern times, representing the highest level of human industrial manufacturing capability. In recent years, driven by both market and policy, the third industrial revolution based on semiconductor has been continuously detonated with the help of artificial intelligence and big data. China's semiconductor industry has ushered in the best development opportunity since the founding of the People's Republic of China. But as Moore's law approaches its limits, the innovation of new materials is bound to step up. After IBM replaced "aluminum" with "copper" in 1997, today, two decades later, the era of "cobalt" in the semiconductor industry officially appeared, will provoke the industry turning point cross-era task!


The semiconductor industry has seen a number of key turning points in recent years, mostly in transistor architecture and device technology. The next turning point in the semiconductor industry is not far away. The innovation of new materials will be followed by the "cobalt" era, which will gradually end the "tungsten" and "copper" era.

10 nm and 7 nm Nodes Enter the Age of Cobalt Wires

With the development of semiconductor manufacturing process below 10 nanometers, the "copper" as the conductor material began to expose shortcomings such as insufficient conduction rate, which made the process technology meet the bottleneck at the nodes of 10 nanometers and 7 nanometers. Therefore, the major semiconductor manufacturers and equipment manufacturers began to invest in the research and development of new materials to break through the limitations of semiconductor manufacturing process technology.


Applied Materials is a global leader in semiconductor equipment. It is one of the first semiconductor manufacturers to put "cobalt" as conductor material instead of traditional "copper" and "tungsten". Now, such an industrial revolution is about to be implemented in commercial chips, which has epoch-making significance!


Under the advanced technology of 10 and 7 nanometers, using "cobalt" as conductor material can achieve the goal of stronger conductivity, lower power consumption and smaller chip size. In the future, it may even go down to 5 and 3 nanometer process nodes.


Unlike transistors, metal-coated contacts and wires tend to be more efficient when they are smaller, but less efficient when they are smaller. If the wire is compared to a straw, the smaller the straw is, the more likely it is to block. Therefore, there are three key reference points in the selection of wire materials, namely, filling capacity, resistance and reliability.


For processes above 30 nanometers, aluminum is poor at filling and reliability, but copper is highly qualified and therefore still an important material. However, after entering the high-end process below 20 nanometers, the performance of tungsten, aluminum and copper is not ideal. In contrast, "cobalt" is a new force in filling capacity, resistance and reliability, especially in the high-end technology of semiconductor below 10/7 nanometers, "cobalt" is the king of the new generation of wire materials.

Cobalt Would Be Widely Used in Semiconductor Field

Due to the advantages of cobalt as a nanoscale semiconductor, the industry expects that "cobalt" metal materials will start from 7/10 nanometers and enter the semiconductor wire manufacturing process. It is expected that "cobalt" materials will be expanded below the node of the 5 nanometer process.


It is understood that Intel has revealed that on the IEEE will be 10 part interconnection layer on nanometer technology nodes, imported cobalt material details, in the bottom 10 nm node interconnection of two layer imported cobalt material, can achieve 5 ~ 10 times of electron mobility improvement, and reduce the access of the double resistance, this is many semiconductor manufacturing companies, the first public discussion to share the details of the cobalt material used in manufacturing technology of the enterprise.


TRUNNANO (aka. Luoyang Tongrun Nano Technology Co. Ltd.) is a trusted global chemical material supplier & manufacturer with over 12 years’ experience in providing super high quality chemicals and Nano materials. The Nano cobalt powder produced by our company has high purity, fine particle size and impurity content. Lower, please contact us if necessary.

Amorphous Boron Powder | High Purity Graphite Powder | Boride Powder | 3D Printing Powder | Zinc Sulfide ZnS Powder | Oxide Powder | Silicide Powder