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Katherine Derbyshire

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Katherine Derbyshire is a technical editor at Semiconductor Engineering.

Author's Latest Posts

Looking Forward To SPIE, And Beyond
By Katherine Derbyshire - 16 Feb, 2023 - Comments: 0

On the eve of this year’s SPIE Advanced Lithography + Patterning conference, I took a look at the IEEE Devices and Systems Roadmap’s lithography section. It’s especially notable for the emergence of EUV lithography, which has quickly become critical for advanced logic. High-NA tools to support still smaller dimensions are on the horizon. In the near-term, though, the key challenge is not ... » read more

2D Semiconductor Materials Creep Toward Manufacturing
By Katherine Derbyshire - 16 Feb, 2023 - Comments: 0

As transistors scale down, they need thinner channels to achieve adequate channel control. In silicon, though, surface roughness scattering degrades mobility, limiting the ultimate channel thickness to about 3nm. Two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), such as MoS2 and WSe2, are attractive in part because they avoid this limitation. With no out-of-plane dangling bonds and at... » read more

The Physics Of Ferroelectrics
By Katherine Derbyshire - 19 Jan, 2023 - Comments: 0

The physics of ferroelectric materials is a large topic — too large for comprehensive coverage in a single article. While researching my recent article on negative capacitance, I found a number of papers that might be of interest to readers seeking more depth. Researchers in Japan used ferroelectric BiFeO3 to control the behavior of CaMnO3, a Mott insulator. Changing the polarization of th... » read more

Ferroelectric Memories: The Middle Ground
By Katherine Derbyshire - 19 Jan, 2023 - Comments: 0

The first article in this series considered the use of ferroelectrics to improve subthreshold swing behavior in logic transistors. The prospects for ferroelectrics in logic applications are uncertain, but ferroelectric memories have clear advantages. The two most common commercial memories lie at opposite ends of a spectrum. DRAM is fast, but requires constant power to maintain its informat... » read more

Ferroelectrics: The Dream Of Negative Capacitance
By Katherine Derbyshire - 15 Dec, 2022 - Comments: 0

Ferroelectrics are getting a serious re-examination, as chipmakers look for new options to maintain drive current. Ferroelectric materials can provide non-volatile memory, serving an important functional gap somewhere between DRAM and flash memory. Indeed, ferroelectrics for memory and 2D channels for transistors were two highlights of the recent IEEE Electron Device Meeting. Ferroelectri... » read more

What’s Different About Next-Gen Transistors
By Katherine Derbyshire - 20 Oct, 2022 - Comments: 0

After nearly a decade and five major nodes, along with a slew of half-nodes, the semiconductor manufacturing industry will begin transitioning from finFETs to gate-all-around stacked nanosheet transistor architectures at the 3nm technology node. Relative to finFETs, nanosheet transistors deliver more drive current by increasing channel widths in the same circuit footprint. The gate-all-aroun... » read more

The High Price Of Smaller Features
By Katherine Derbyshire - 15 Sep, 2022 - Comments: 0

The semiconductor industry’s push for higher numerical apertures is driven by the relationship between NA and critical dimension. As the NA goes up, the CD goes down: Where λ is the wavelength and k1 is a process coefficient. While 0.55 NA exposure systems will improve resolution, Larry Melvin, principal engineer at Synopsys, noted that smaller features always come with a process cos... » read more

New Materials Open Door To New Devices
By Katherine Derbyshire - 21 Jul, 2022 - Comments: 0

Integrating 2D materials into conventional semiconductor manufacturing processes may be one of the more radical changes in the chip industry’s history. While there is pain and suffering associated with the introduction of any new materials in semiconductor manufacturing, transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) support a variety of new device concepts, including BEOL transistors and single-... » read more

High-NA EUV May Be Closer Than It Appears
By Katherine Derbyshire - 16 Jun, 2022 - Comments: 1

High-NA EUV is on track to enable scaling down to the Angstrom level, setting the stage for chips with even higher transistor counts and a whole new wave of tools, materials, and system architectures. At the recent SPIE Advanced Lithography conference, Mark Phillips, director of lithography hardware and solutions at Intel, reiterated the company’s intention to deploy the technology in high... » read more

Driving Toward More Rugged, Less Expensive SiC
By Katherine Derbyshire - 19 May, 2022 - Comments: 0

Silicon carbide is gaining traction in the power semiconductor market, particularly in electrified vehicles, but it's still too expensive for many applications. The reasons are well understood, but until recently SiC was largely a niche technology that didn't warrant the investment. Now, as demand grows for chips that can work in high-voltage applications, SiC is getting a much closer look. ... » read more

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