UMC Group's Gold Logic Copper Interconnect Technology Reaches Next Phase of Development

SUNNYVALE, Calif.—April 12, 1999—UMC Group today announced it has reached several development milestones with its copper interconnect technology. The company, which has aggressively pursued its copper development program since early 1998, has made significant progress in its mission to offer copper interconnect technology to early adopters on its Gold LogicTM L180 Cu (0.18um) platform later this year.

Fu Tai Liou, senior vice president of UMC Group in charge of technology development said, "Copper promises higher performance, higher packing density, and better reliability. We have already demonstrated dual-damascene process flows for copper interconnect in multi-level structures, and demonstrated key reliability performance data, including a 30x improvement in electromigration reliability over aluminum metalization, junction stability, and comparable yields for copper relative to aluminum. Copper will also offer significant cost advantages because the process integration steps are simpler."

Jim D. Kupec, president of UMC Group (USA) noted, "The move to copper interconnect technology is a major trend as we continue to scale down to finer geometries. UMC Group recognized this significance of copper early, and this is why we are leading the pure-play semiconductor market sector in terms of offering wafers with copper interconnect structures. The appeal of copper is clear, increased performance and density at reduced costs."

Jim Kupec continued, "We have aligned with best-in-class software and hardware companies to develop processes incorporating copper interconnect technology for 0.18, 0.15 and 0.12um generation integrated circuits (ICs). Through our strategic development partnerships with the leading companies in each area of wafer processing, we are ensuring that our high-performance copper interconnect technology will be available in a time frame that will allow our customers in intensely performance-driven markets to gain a competitive advantage."

The copper interconnect partners, that have been working with UMC Group since early development efforts, include a broad range of industry leading companies. Novellus, a supplier of thin film deposition technologies for creating advanced ICs, has provided products from its DamascusR Complete Copper? suite, including its SABRE? copper electrofill tool and equipment for dielectrics deposition in a dual damascene process. SABRE enables production-worthy, void-free copper fill in extremely deep, narrow trenches. SpeedFam-IPEC provided its 776 CMP copper processing system which provides greater flexibility and capabilities for UMC Group's production. KLA-Tencor provided copper interconnect defect reduction and process parametric control solutions, helping UMC to quickly identify and source critical yield- and performance-related process integration issues. Critical copper polishing is being accomplished using high-performance chemical mechanical planarization (CMP) slurries from Cabot Corporation's Microelectronic Materials Division, the leading global supplier of these and other slurry materials to the semiconductor industry.

UMC Group's alliance with Synopsys will enable designers to take advantage of this new technology. Synopsys will announce shortly that it is developing transistor-level power, timing and layout extraction tools that will enable users to more readily target UMC Group's copper interconnect devices.

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