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Katherine Derbyshire

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Katherine Derbyshire is a technical editor at Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

Germanium wedge-FETs pry away misfit dislocations
By Katherine Derbyshire - 23 Jan, 2014 - Comments: 1

Any approach to alternative channel integration must consider the lattice mismatch between silicon and other channel materials. Some schemes, such as IMEC’s selective epitaxy, view the lattice mismatch as an obstacle and look for ways to minimize its effects. This point of view certainly has merit: misfit dislocations do significantly degrade transistor performance. Still, back in 2011 Shu-Ha... » read more

What’s After Silicon?
By Katherine Derbyshire - 09 Jan, 2014 - Comments: 4

As discussed in the first article in this series, germanium is one of the leading candidates to succeed silicon as the channel material for advanced transistors, and has been for several years. The fundamental challenges of germanium integration were detailed at length in 2007. Unfortunately, knowing what the issues are does not necessarily lead to a solution. When a MOSFET transistor turns ... » read more

Alternative Channel Materials For Post-Silicon FinFETs
By Katherine Derbyshire - 16 Dec, 2013 - Comments: 4

At first glance, other semiconductors always have looked more attractive to device designers than silicon. Both germanium and III-V compound semiconductors have higher carrier mobility, allowing faster switching at the same device size. And yet, as manufacturers begin to consider alternative channel materials for sub-10nm devices, the industry is remembering why silicon became a standard in ... » read more

Phosphors Turn Blue LED Lights White
By Katherine Derbyshire - 18 Nov, 2013 - Comments: 0

LEDs inherently produce monochromatic light. An excited electron decays back to the ground state, releasing its energy in the form of a photon. The wavelength of this photon is defined by the band structure of the semiconductors used to make the LED. While monochromatic light is fine for indicator lights, most display and general lighting applications use white light. Not only is white light... » read more

What Color Is That LED?
By Katherine Derbyshire - 11 Nov, 2013 - Comments: 0

As I discovered while researching an upcoming article on phosphors for LED lighting, the question turns out to be surprisingly difficult to answer. Measuring the spectrum of a light source is straightforward, but determining how that spectrum will be perceived by the human eye is more challenging. Under medium and high brightness conditions, the color perceived by the brain will depend on s... » read more

The Upside Of Through-Silicon Vias
By Katherine Derbyshire - 17 Oct, 2013 - Comments: 0

Through-silicon vias (TSVs) for 3D integration are superficially similar to damascene copper interconnects for integrated circuits. Both etch the via, into either silicon or a dielectric, line it with a barrier against copper diffusion, then deposit a seed layer prior to filling the via with copper using some form of aqueous deposition. In both processes, the integrity of the diffusion barrier ... » read more

Keeping EUV Cool
By Katherine Derbyshire - 19 Sep, 2013 - Comments: 1

It’s been clear for a long time that EUV lithography sources will be fairly inefficient. The laser-produced plasma (LPP) source concept involves heating a droplet of metallic tin with a high-powered laser to produce a plasma. Only a fraction of the energy of the laser will be converted to light, rather than heat, and less than 1% of the light emitted by the plasma will be at EUV wavelengths. ... » read more

Psst…Check This Out
By Katherine Derbyshire - 15 Aug, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Katherine Derbyshire It’s hard to tell when the semiconductor industry actually changes over from one technology node to the next. Process technology is among the most closely guarded of fab secrets, and things like product sales numbers aren’t far behind. There are indirect measures, though. For example, the same device with a smaller feature size will have a smaller die size, and... » read more

3D Integration
By Katherine Derbyshire - 23 Apr, 2013 - Comments: 0

By Katherine Derbyshire It’s a central problem of integrated circuit scaling. While transistor delay goes down along with channel length, interconnect delay goes up. The 90 nm technology node featured a transistor delay of about 1.6 ps, while a 1 mm long interconnect wire added about 5x102 ps. For the 22 nm node, the ITRS estimates transistor delay at 0.4 ps, but interconnect delay at abou... » read more

There’s More To EUV Than Source Power
By Katherine Derbyshire - 20 Sep, 2012 - Comments: 0

By Katherine Derbyshire For some time now, most industry coverage of EUV lithography has focused on the light source. As my colleagues have pointed out, source power limitations impose major constraints on not only potential EUV-based device manufacturing, but even on development of sub-20nm devices and process technologies. When throughput is in the neighborhood of four wafers per hour, lear... » read more

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