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3D Transistors

Transistors where source and drain are added as fins of the gate.
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Description

3D transistors have the source and drain added as fins of the gate to control the channel from three sides instead of one side.

Examples of 3D transistors:

They have been in use since 2011, when Intel started to mass produce the first non-planar transistors in its 22nm process. The idea for 3D transistors came 10 years earlier from lab at the University of California, Berkeley in 1999, and was in research and development for a decade. The 3D transistors were a way to stop the leakage of current that occurred as the metal gate got too small for the planar source and drain to stop the current completely. Adding more source and drain area to the gate with fins helped solve the problem and enabled transistors to continue shrinking. Shrinking the transistors made them faster.

The 3D transistor has become the dominate transistor used today.

 

Fig. 1: Planar transistors vs. finFETs vs. gate-all-around Source: Lam Research

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