SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters)—IBM has developed a way to make microchips run up to one-third faster or use 15 percent less power by using an exotic material that “self-assembles” in a similar way to a seashell or snowflake.
The computer services and technology company said the new process allows the wiring on a chip to be insulated with vacuum, replacing the glass-like substances used for decades but which have become less effective as chips steadily shrink.
It is the latest achievement for IBM researchers, who have announced a number of advances in recent months allowing chips to get smaller despite challenges posed by physical laws at those tiny dimensions.
“This is one of the biggest breakthroughs I’ve seen in the last decade,” said John Kelly, International Business Machines Corp.’s senior vice president of technology and intellectual property.
“The holy grail of insulators is to use vacuum … and we’ve broken the code on how to do this,” Kelly said.
The technique works by coating a silicon wafer with a layer of a special polymer that when baked, naturally forms trillions of uniformly tiny holes just 20 nanometers, or millionth of a millimeter, across.
The resulting pattern is used to create the copper wiring on top of a chip and the insulating gaps that let electricity flow smoothly. A similar process is seen in nature during the formation of snowflakes, tooth enamel and seashells, IBM said.