Applied Materials showcases how Cobalt enables power and performance scaling at leading edge nodes

The semiconductor industry has already begun using cobalt to reduce contact and middle of line resistance. Replacing tungsten contacts with cobalt has paid dividends with an approximate 60 percent improvement in contact line resistance. Replacing the short-length copper interconnect at the lowest metal contact layers with cobalt has reduced via resistance (for lower IR drop) and improved electromigration reliability. 

 

New materials of interest include ruthenium and molybdenum, but both still lag cobalt from a maturity perspective. However, a detailed analysis of line resistance scaling shows that copper is superior or adequate to CDs of 12-15nm. Therefore, for metal levels above M1, where the interconnect is long enough for line resistance to be the key performance factor, copper wins. 

 

Integrating cobalt is not trivial, but Applied Materials has developed an “Integrated Materials Solution” for cobalt whereby the multiple process chambers needed to integrate cobalt can be combined into the same Endura platform, allowing wafers to be kept in vacuum for pristine materials engineering at ever more critical dimensions.

Applied Materials Blog: Cobalt Enables Power and Performance Scaling at Single-Digit Logic Nodes 

by Mehul Naik, Dec 17, 2018 (LINK)

 

 Logic CMOS scaling goals – performance, power, area and cost improvements. (Applied Materials)

---------
Written by Abhishekkumar Thakur