Shrinking interconnects beyond copper.

The continuous downscaling of transistors in integrated circuits following Moore's law—doubling the number of transistors on a microchip about every 2 years—has been an extraordinary feat of engineering, pushing the limits of fundamental physics. A transistor is a key component that regulates electrical current flow between terminals (conductive connection points) by switching the current on or off. When the size of a transistor decreases, the switching speed increases, allowing an integrated circuit to process information more rapidly. However, as a transistor's dimensions scale down to the nanometer regime, interconnects—the metal wires that connect transistors and other circuit components on a microchip—become a major bottleneck for the processing speed (1, 2). Thus, advancing the performance of integrated circuits for next-generation electronic devices cannot be achieved solely through downscaling of transistors but requires the development of new interconnect materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]