As the cost and technology challenge in sustaining Moore's Law magnifies with each chip generation, an alternative approach is being increasingly adopted. This is to place a system in a single package, and hence increase device integration to achieve the desired system level performance.

Such structures use interconnect at ever decreasing scale where metals are more single crystal than polycrystalline, and the barrier layers play an important role in determining the overall properties. The presentation will describe the work at NPL to measure these interconnect systems.

Christopher Hunt graduated with an honours degree in Physics and a PhD from Surrey University in Materials Science. He heads up the electronics interconnection area that currently has two main thrusts, advanced interconnection in packaging and sustainability, where project areas have developed in response to technology and legislative drivers. He is chair of the UK BSI committees and plays an active role in IEC, and other international committees formulating assembly standards. He sits on the steering board of two UK trade bodies.