Chip Construction

Now copper is becoming increasingly important as one of the interstitial layers in the build-up of the chips. Copper conducts electricity and heat better than aluminium and is now being used to help increase the power and speed of chips without size having to be enlarged. This gives a performance gain of 30% and permits miniaturisation of current channel lengths to 0.12 microns, allowing up to 200 million transistors to be packed into a single chip.