What American company would even attempt this aside from Intel? IBM still does the relevant research, but quit the business of actually using it. They licensed their 2nm process technology research to Japan’s Rapidus if I recall. I cannot think of anyone else in the US that would be willing to take the risk of trying to start a 2nm foundry service.
I've read in the interview below that all attempts to implement IBM's copper interconnects failed, except for TSMC.
At least for this particular technology, IBM did not deliver everything needed to do this.
"So, when we went to .13u, .13u the people began to change from aluminum to copper. And IBM was the leader for the copper metal. They had the longest history of developing copper technology. They worked for more than ten years on copper. TSMC didn't have any experience in copper at all. So, when we decided we need to adopt copper, okay. So, the copper is one story and low-k material is another one. IBM decided kind of low-k material is a spin-on material called SILK. IBM had a Research Consortium that IBM-- Samsung joined them, I think, ST Micro joined them. Several companies joined the Consortium.
"And UMC joined them. But we didn't join them. They all used that spin-on low-K material. But we decided to use CVD - instead of flourine-doped it's a carbon-doped made by Applied Materials. They're called Black Diamond. So, we choose Black Diamond. The reason we chose Black Diamond was very simple, because I suffer at .18 with a spin-on. I wouldn't touch spin-on again. <laughter> But they didn't go through that. So, we were very, very lucky. TSMC became the first company in the world which was able to ship a manufacturing wafers with the copper and low-k, because IBM failed... Later on they found reliability the problem."
Spin in is an interesting tech history. As for cvd low-k, it is mostly how much C is in your silicon, and likewise how you setup the damascene etch stop. Intel was low-ish k in about 2002 on 130nm.
I am not so sure tsm was first. Depends on how you define lowk.
