Unconventional electroplating techniques can improve performance

Almost six decades ago Intel cofounder Gordon Moore postulated that processors would evolve regularly to double their transistor count, thereby enabling better performance and lower costs. Whiletraditional Dennard scaling held true for decades, its theoretical limit is fast approaching. The electroplating experts at ClassOne Technology demonstrate a new ‘More than Moore’ pathway.

By Cody Carter, Product Engineer, ClassOne Technology and Stan Wright, Manager, Compound Semiconductor-WLP, MacDermid Alpha

ClassOne Technology has built its business around electroplating innovation, demonstrating that ‘More than Moore’ next-generation technologies do not require ever-shrinking node sizes and exceedingly complex metallization schemes. Today, the company is rethinking fundamental electroplating design to address emerging requirements. Its latest discovery reveals that industry has just scratched the surface of what electroplating can do for power ICs and many other applications.

The Past & Present of IC Tech
The dawn of Moore’s Law in the 1960s recognized a trend in the semiconductor industry – namely, that MOSFET devices doubled in performance every year. Moore then predicted that they would continue to do so at least for the next decade. As semiconductors grew in use and value, manufacturers were able to exponentially improve performance through scaling ever-smaller, further increasing their use and value; this pace of advancement would continue for decades to come, creating two key development trends that have not necessarily been as beneficial to the rest of the semiconductor industry.

The first trend is the way in which technology was driven to development. Because device manufacturers have been primarily focused on scaling logic and memory devices, technology development was dedicated to the specific bottlenecks that hindered this scaling. As a result, certain technologies, such as lithography, received intensive development; other technologies considered adequate for use in this type of manufacturing received less development; and technologies not involved in logic and memory (like gold electrochemical deposition) received significantly less development.