Intelligent Manufacturing € February € 1997 € Vol. 3 € No. 2

PMT Develops Technique for Faster Computer Chips

Plasma & Materials Technologies (PMT) (Chatsworth, Calif.; http://www.pmat.com) has announced a breakthrough in the deposition of low dielectric constant materials that could increase the speed of semiconductor devices and lead to the development of faster computer chips.

The new technique involves using a proprietary deposition technique that produces dielectric constant films that are two times lower than what is currently available. After testing the technique, PMT hopes to ramp up to mass production in 1998.

As the number of transistors on a logic device increase, the complex interconnect scheme of wiring and insulating layers has proven to be the bottleneck that limits the speed of the device. This is due to an electrical time delay caused by the resistance of the wiring and the capacitance of the insulating layers. By lowering the dielectric constant, the capacitance is reduced and the electrical time delay is minimized. A reduction in the electrical time delay will increase the speed of the device.

The breakthrough centers on making high quality films with a dielectric constant of 2.0; by contrast, other chip equipment makers, using different techniques, have been unable to get lower than a level of 3.2 to 3.5. The difference, some analysts believe, could quadruple the performance of microprocessor chips.