Aluminum has a low melting point. As a material for this industry, it is rapidly approaching the limit of its effectiveness. A new material, perhaps copper, will be needed. But copper poses some of its own unique problems. The material is poisonous to silicon, the most common semiconductor material.
Copper interacts with everything and degrades the material.
My approach involves building a diffusion barrier the around copper. Such a barrier might be made of a thin film that actually would prevent the copper from negatively interacting with other materials. Mayer is working on the problem with engineers from Intel Inc., a team of graduate students, and Terry Alford, an ASU assistant professor of chemical, bio, and materials engineering. If we can successfully form this encapsulating layer around copper, we will make a worthwhile contribution to the semiconductor industry. A second speculative project being conducted at ASU's ion beam research facility involves an alloy of the materials silicon, germanium, and carbon.