IBM develops new insulation materials

U.S. IBM Corp. announced the use of a low dielectric constant insulating material developed by The Dow Chemical Co., Ltd., a so-called low-k "SiLK (Dow Chemical), in an LSI manufactured using a 0.13 μm process CMOS technology. Trademark)". Recently, the development of low-k materials has become quite active.
As circuit board etching accuracy becomes higher and higher, the integrated circuit on the chip becomes denser and the signal interference problem becomes more obvious. IBM said that low-k materials help the company solve the problem of signal interference in the chip.
The company recently announced that the company will begin manufacturing copper-conductor-based chips from this material next year. The new process will increase the computer's capacity and performance by 30%. The new chip is designed for Internet servers and network devices. These devices require high performance and energy consumption. Over the past 30 years, the dielectric constant of SiO2 has been used as an insulating material as follows: SiO2 crystallized quartz is 4.2, and SiO2 material manufactured by plasma CVD method is 3.8. Compared to the lower "SiLK" dielectric constant of only 2.65.
In addition to "SiLK," manufacturers are still looking for other materials for low-k materials. The opinions of semiconductor manufacturers on which materials to use are still inconsistent. This is because no matter which kind of material is difficult to process and use, use it as the insulating material needs quite high processing technology. The "SiLK" used this time is an organic polymer material and has low heat resistance. Therefore, some experts pointed out that it is prone to change in the manufacturing process.
IBM overcomes the shortcomings by improving the manufacturing process. Film formation was performed using a spin on method. It is reported that the two companies will jointly develop low-k materials with a dielectric constant below 2.0 in the future.