IBM says copper interconnects aren't going anywhere

Two decades ago, the use of aluminium interconnects was dumped at the 180nm node in favor of copper interconnects as the latter offered better performance. This move was led by IBM and these days there's a lot of buzz about graphene or even more advanced interconnects.

However, IBM researcher believe there's no need to find a new interconnect material just yet. With some slight tweaks, copper should scale all the way to the end of the road for CMOS:

Big Blue is touting "copper forever" at the IEEE Nanotechnology Symposium this week in Albany, with more details expected to be revealed at the IEEE International Electronic Devices Meeting (IEDM) in San Francisco.

"Graphene is not readily manufacturable, and furthermore end-to-end comparisons show graphene does not flow uniformly and can't achieve the low resistances of enhanced copper interconnects," IBM Fellow Dan Edelstein told EE Times in an exclusive preview of his Nanotechnology Symposium talk.

More details at EE Times.