Interconnect

Enabling Innovation Beyond Shrinking Transistors

Logic scaling requires advances not only in transistors, but also in the wiring that powers and connects them. As AI GPUs grow to hundreds of billions of transistors and thousands of miles of interconnects, rising resistance and capacitance make materials and process innovation essential.

Applied Materials leads the industry in interconnect technology and metals deposition, with Endura™ systems serving as the foundation of nearly every chip built over the past 30 years and driving innovations in both transistors and wiring.  The latest Endura™ CuBS Volta™ Ruthenium CVD system integrates seven process technologies under vacuum to reduce via resistance by up to 50% through selective ALD barriers and void-free copper reflow, enabling logic scaling at 3nm and beyond; its innovative ruthenium-cobalt (RuCo) liner also creates more space for copper, improving performance-per-watt.

Wiring performance depends on more than the metal itself. The Enhanced Black Diamond™ PECVD system low-k dielectric answers rising parasitic capacitance with a stronger chemical bonding network that increases mechanical strength by 40%, enabling transistor wiring layer scaling at 2nm and beyond. The Producer™ Viva™ treatment system, co-optimized with Endura copper deposition, grows larger copper grains and drives manganese dopants to the surface, cutting wiring resistance by over 30%. Copper polishing on the Opta™ CMP platform then planarizes each layer with nanometer precision, critical for EUV's limited depth of focus.

Beyond these frontside advances, backside power delivery is the next major interconnect inflection. Frontside networks combine power and signal wiring, creating congestion and voltage drops of as much as 50%. Moving power to the backside simplifies frontside design, lowers resistance and power, and can increase logic density by 20-30% at the same lithography. Applied is porting its frontside innovations to backside applications, expanding its interconnect leadership into an emerging area of the market.

As the industry moves to gate-all-around (GAA) transistors, backside power delivery and angstrom-scale features, the wiring that connects them becomes as decisive as the devices themselves.  Applied will continue to deliver the materials engineering breakthroughs that keep interconnects — and the chips that depend on them — moving forward.