TSMC to Start 90nm with Copper, Low-k This Year

By Richard Ball -- Electronics Weekly, 10/1/2003

TSMC will begin production on a 90nm process, with copper on all metal layers and using a low-k dielectric, during 2003.


"Where we are on 90nm is we will definitely enter initial production before the end of the year," Chuck Byers, a director at TSMC, confirmed with Electronics Weekly .

Yields will be "acceptable," he said, although these will depend on the size of device.

The choice of low-k dielectric has been critical. TSMC's decision to use Black Diamond from Applied Materials was the right choice, Byers said, while companies that went with the competing SiLK process have had problems.

"This has cost them a lot of time and their customers money," he said.

Even so, TSMC had issues with Black Diamond. "Where the bugaboo for us was in delamination problems when we went to packaging," admitted Byers. These have now been resolved with packaging firms ASE and Amkor.

Four of TSMC's customers are using low-k in production at 0.13-micron, including LSI Logic and Agere Systems. The process now brings in 17 percent of the company's revenues.

FPGA maker Altera also says it uses this process and will be one of the first onto the 90nm node.

The 90nm process will go through TSMC's 300mm fab, which will churn out 10,000 wafers a month by December. "We have around 20 customer projects in one stage of design or another," Byers said.

Meanwhile, the company's second 300mm plant, Fab 14, is built and ready for equipment. "We don't have an exact timeframe for this [installing equipment], but probably within a year," Byers added.

The company says its fabs are running at 90 percent capacity, some 300,000 wafers per month.
Electronics Weekly is the London-based sister publication of Electronic News .