Computer Chip Fabrication Notes 2007

I've been reading Geordie Rose's blog starting from the beginning and I've gotten up to 2007. I found these two tidbits on pages he linked to.

This one is from a post dated July 2007 on HPCwire, a blog about High Performance Computing by Michael Feldman.

2. Also in January, Intel demonstrated its "breakthrough" 45nm process technology, announcing an aggressive schedule to roll-out commercial products based on the new process. The first shipments of 45nm chips may come as early as Q4 2007. The new process technology uses hafnium to dramatically reduce electron leakage, an increasingly annoying problem as semiconductor process sizes have shrunk. IBM also announced plans to move to 45nm, but their plans to get the technology into production seem less aggressive than Intel's. The real loser here is AMD, who is still in the process of moving their competing x86 products onto the 65nm process.

Don't you just hate it when you have leaking electrons? Actually, the key word here is Hafnium, the one element that isn't all there (that's supposed to be a funny, it's only half an element. Get it? Ha, ha, ha.) In the Periodic Table of Elements, Hafnium is between Luteium, a rare earth element, and Tantalum, a metal used for making capacitors. Tantalum is right next to Tungsten, a very tough metal used to make light bulb filaments. This is the first time I have noticed a commercial use for Hafnium, though I suppose there are others, like in control rods for nuclear power plants.

As for it's value it's hard to say. Metal Pages doesn't list it. Most of the suppliers seem to be targeting computer chip manufacturers. You can buy the stuff in 100 Liter drums, but with the economy in flux, who knows what they will be willing to sell it for. Like most materials destined for computer chips, I suspect the bulk of the price is for the special processing needed to make the material pure enough, not for the material itself.

This one is from a presentation delivered back in 2007 by T.N. Theis.

Single atom defects can cause local leakage currents 10 - 100x higher than the average current, impacting reliability and generating unwanted variation between devices.

They are talking about fabricating integrated circuits (making computer chips) here, and they are concerned about a single atom being out of place. That's a pretty effing small error. No wonder all the chip people are crazy.

Update January 2017 replaced missing image.