Integration of new materials into semiconductor technology has become ever
more important in the quest for continued performance improvements in microelectronics. For example, the introduction of copper wiring and low-k dielectric materials into back-end silicon processing has enabled microprocessors which operate above gigahertz frequencies. New giant magnetoresistive (GMR) materials for magnetic disc read-heads are pushing storage densities above 100 Gb/in 2 . Chemically-amplified polymer resists have aided in improving photolithographic resolutions to 100 nanometer (nm) dimensions. Introducing each of these materials into "conventional" silicon processing has involved both large efforts to ensure compatibility with the established technology, and also development of reproducible processes for building with the new materials.
By: Charles Black, Kathryn Wilder Guarini
Published in: RC22535 in 2002
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