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Although the pace of Moore's Law has undeniably slackened in the last decade, transistor density is still increasing with every new process technology. But there is a challenge with feeding power to smaller transistors, as with the smaller transistors comes thinner power wires within the chip, which increases their resistance and may cause yield loss. Looking to combat that effect, this week Applied Materials introduced its new Applied Endura Copper Barrier Seed IMS with Volta Ruthenium Copper Vapor Deposition (CVD) tool, which enables chipmakers to keep using copper for wiring with 2 nm-class and more advanced process technologies.
They did have TSMC on stage with them, and they called out Samsung which they would not have done without approval. As for Intel, they were using Ru/Co seed layers in published research by 2017 so one can presume they are happy to see production issues conquered.
