There were few details available about the performance characteristics of the process, which is still under development and has not been publicly announced. .

"We feel that the aluminum world still has some room to go. A lot of small companies dread making the transition from aluminum to copper so they want to squeeze every last drop out of aluminum," he said. "So we will cater to both worlds." said UMC's president of 300-mm wafer operations, Chris Chi,

So far, the conventional path for 130-nm has been to switch to copper for the interconnect and a low-k material for the insulator. However, problems with low-k materials, such as mechanical strength and thermal mismatches with copper, have slowed their introduction and forced the industry into reverse, using more mature fluorine-doped silicate glass instead.

UMC, which has had its share of problems in introducing 130-nm technology, seems to be going a step further. Chi said not all applications need the performance of copper, which reduces resistance in the interconnect stack, but could still benefit from a move to smaller geometries. He cited the south bridge of PC chipsets as an example.

There is no set deadline for introduction of the process, which UMC is dubbing 0.135 micron to give it slight differentiation. Chi said there are already customers interested in the niche offering, most of whom are Taiwan-based IC design houses. UMC will introduce the process on 200-mm wafers and possibly move it to 300-mm wafers if demand justifies it.

Chi said he believes that UMC is the only foundry preparing to offer an aluminum-based 130-nm process. He also noted that it will help UMC extend the life of some its aluminum-based process equipment.

By: DocMemory
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