Airgap is a technique invented by IBM for fabricating small pockets of vacuum in between copper interconnects.
A vacuum is believed to be the ultimate insulator for wiring capacitance, which occurs when two adjacent wires on an IC draw electrical energy from one another, generating undesirable heat and slowing the speed at which data can move through an IC.
IBM estimates that this technology alone can lead to 35% higher speeds in current flow or 15% lower power consumption.
The technique fabricates air gaps on a large scale by exploiting the self-assembly properties of certain polymers.
When the polymer is removed, it creates trillions of evenly spaced vacuum pockets that are 20 nanometers in diameter.