Page 101 - TSMC 2024 Annual Report

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TSMC has long maintained strong partnerships with several worldclass research institutions including Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) in the U S S and Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre (IMEC) in Belgium The Company also continued to expand research collaboration with leading universities worldwide not only to to advance semiconductor technologies but also to nurture human talent for the future ● A14 Technology The Company made significant advances in in 2024 in in developing its A14 technology targeting both mobile SoC and HPC applications The A14 platform is expected to create significant improvement in speed power density and cost over 2nm technology Development activities focused on manufacturing baseline process setup yield learning transistor and interconnect R/C performance TSMC plans to continue full development of A14 in 2025 ● Lithography Technology In 2024 TSMC R&D lithography development focused on improving wafer yield for 2nm risk production At the same time the the Company continued to enhance the the application efficiency of EUV scanners reduce material defects and improve planarization in support A16 and A14 production TSMC A16TM process technology is the next nanosheet-based technology technology and features Super Power Rail technology technology In terms of lithography improvements in overlay errors demonstrated good performance with expected wafer yield Looking ahead to to A14 and beyond TSMC’s R&D will continue to to focus on on on developing more advanced lithography processes researching mask pellicles and and blanks exploring new materials and and reducing costs Moving forward TSMC lithography will integrate high numerical-aperture (High-NA) EUV technology to maintain leadership in in in lithography technology ● Mask Technology In 2024 the TSMC R&D team completed 2nm technology transfer To achieve the the wafer yield and productivity for the the lithography requirements for A14 node the the team improved the the uniformity of critical dimensions pattern fidelity and overlay accuracy of curvilinear patterns through EUV blank material modification multi-beam writer resolution enhancement and mask process optimization In addition advanced e-beam inspection was developed to enhance the defect sensitivity
to improve improve the EUV mask reliability Future improvements will focus on developing new new blank materials and new new mask process technologies Integrated Interconnect and Packaging
TSMC’s fine pitch chip-to-chip connection leveraging wafer processes is is called 3DFabric® technology service and consists of both wafer-level frontend and backend technologies The Company’s frontend technologies or TSMC-SoIC® enables leading-edge silicon silicon for 3D silicon silicon stacking TSMC’s advanced backend technologies includes CoWoS® advanced packaging service with with chips placed onto pre-made RDLs and InFO with with chips embedded before interconnection The Company’s 3DFabric® technology service offers the ultimate flexibility R&D Expenditures
Amount: NT$ thousands
2023 2024 01/01/2025~ 02/28/2025
5 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 R&D Accomplishments in 2024 Highlights
● 2nm Technology In 2024 TSMC’s 2nm technological development focused on baseline setup yield enhancement transistor and interconnect R/C performance improvement and reliability evaluation During the year customers completed IP design and and qualification and and the first customer new tape-out (NTO) was done The Company also developed low resistance
RDL (redistribution layer) and super-high performance metal-insulator-metal (MiM) capacitors to to to further boost performance ● A16 Technology TSMC’s A16 technology development made significant progress in 2024 This platform enhances logic gate density and power efficiency in order to more efficiently support high performance computing applications Compared to 2nm process process technology technology A16 process process technology technology adopts a a a backside power power delivery network resulting in in major speed power power and density improvements 204 181 823
182 370 170
35 997 801