Imagine driving the world’s premier sports car down a road riddled with potholes. The engine may be incredibly powerful, but the road beneath it limits how that power translates into speed.

The same is true for today’s most advanced AI chips. At leading-edge nodes, chipmakers are packing five distinct materials into a space roughly 1/10,000th the width of a human hair. Even atomic level roughness feels like a major pothole to electrons, slowing signals, increasing resistance, and reducing energy efficiency. That’s why materials engineering has become more critical than ever.

The Rise of Materials Modification

Materials modification has long been a core pillar of semiconductor manufacturing, and its importance has only grown in the AI era. Today, it’s a multi‑billion‑dollar materials engineering segment, fueled by chipmakers’ need for advanced treatments that precisely condition surfaces and interfaces after deposition—and an area where Applied Materials leads. Producer® Viva™, Applied’s radical treatment solution, is designed for the nanoscale regime and enables chips to be engineered atom by atom for high performance at scale.

Built on Applied’s high‑throughput Producer platform, Viva combines gentle chemical radicals with precisely controlled heat in an ultra‑clean environment. Designed for high‑volume manufacturing, its multiple twin‑wafer chambers deliver efficient, cost‑effective processing across both front‑end‑of‑line (transistor) and back‑end‑of‑line (wiring) applications.

Enabling the Next Generation of Transistors

Viva addresses these challenges with a patented radical‑based approach that delivers only pure hydrogen radicals to the wafer, filtering out high‑energy ions that can cause plasma damage. The radicals absorb into the silicon and lower its surface energy (similar to reducing tension). This allows atoms at the interface to move and be rearranged into a smoother structure—much like softening fabric so wrinkles can be ironed out easily.

Crucially, Viva’s wide temperature range—about 150°C to 650°C—supports low‑thermal‑budget processing while preserving flexibility for higher‑temperature treatments as needed. The result is uniform, damage‑free smoothing that yields clean, defect-free interfaces and tighter electrical control. Together, these gains are powering faster, more efficient GAA transistors at leading chipmakers.