With the continuous development of interconnect size in chip fabrication, integrated circuit technology has evolved from transistor-centered era to interconnect-centered era. Conventional metallic interconnects, such as aluminum and copper, face serious challenges in terms of interconnect performance and reliability. Cobalt is considered as an alternative metal to replace copper interconnects because of its better electrical properties at the micro-nano scale, and has received extensive attention and research. The first part of this paper summarizes the history and development of chip metal interconnection technology. The advantages and disadvantages of aluminum interconnection and copper interconnection are introduced. The new generation of cobalt interconnection technology is summarized. This first part also summarizes the potential interconnection materials, such as ruthenium, gold and nano-carbon. In the second part, the related superfilling mechanisms of copper and cobalt are discussed, such as diffusion-adsorption leveling mechanism and curvature enhanced accelerator coverage (CEAC) model, hydrogen induced deactivation (HID) model, potential dependent suppression effect, S-shaped negative differential resistance (S-NDR), differential current efficiency fill (DCEF) mechanism and so on. In the third part, the nucleation and growth process during copper and cobalt superfilling is reviewed, and the influences of different plating solutions, substrate materials and plating processes on the nucleation and growth of copper and cobalt are summarized, so as to provide an insight into the future research on cobalt interconnection.