News Article
TSMC to spend $5billion on additional fabs
Taiwanese firm will build new fab in Tainan which will handle over 100,000 12” wafers per month
Semiconductor foundry TSMC is spending $5billion to enhance its manufacturing capacity. It will expand two of its fabs in Hsinchu and begin construction of a new 'gigafab' called Fab 15 in Tainan. The fab will be able to handle more than 100,000 12inch wafers per month when in full production.
Senior VP of R & D, Shang-Yi Chiang, said that TSMC will continue to use planar transistors for the while, but will start to shift to FinFETs from the 14nm node. He added, "Moving forward, it is likely we will … begin to use germanium or gallium arsenide as a channel material to enhance mobility. From the device physics point of view, FinFET transistors would allow us to carry on to about 7 to 8nm, so we still have about four generations to go based on the technology we know today."
Pointing out the key measure for interconnect performance is resistance and capacitance, said Mr. Chiang said, "Everybody is trying to improve their interconnect speed by reducing capacitance using low K material. TSMC was the first company to ship low-K product and is the first to introduce a second generation low-K material. And we are the first to begin improving resistance – we call this low-R."
"We have been using 193nm immersion lithography and will continue to use this for 20nm production. If extreme ultraviolet or multiple e-beam direct write become cost effective, we will switch to that because mass production for 20nm will begin in 2013."
This article was adapted from the following link
http://www.newelectronics.co.uk/article/24870/TSMC-set-to-spend-5billion-on-additional-capacity.aspx :
