The List Of Unknowns Grows After Silicon


As discussed earlier in this series, most proposed alternative channel schemes depend on germanium channels for pMOS transistors, and InGaAs channels for nMOS transistors. Of the two materials, InGaAs poses by far the more difficult integration challenges. Germanium has been present in advanced silicon CMOS fabs for several technology generations, having been introduced used in strained silicon... » read more

Manufacturing Bits: July 16


Photon Chips Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Vienna University of Technology have devised an all-optical transistor controlled by a single photon. The optical transistor could enable the development of photonic quantum gates and deterministic multi-photon entanglement. For years, researchers have been looking to develop an optical transistor, whe... » read more

Getting Ready For High-Mobility FinFETs


By Mark LaPedus The IC industry entered the finFET era in 2011, when Intel leapfrogged the competition and rolled out the newfangled transistor technology at the 22nm node. Intel hopes to ramp up its second-generation finFET devices at 14nm by year’s end, with plans to debut its 11nm technology by 2015. Hoping to close the gap with Intel, silicon foundries are accelerating their efforts t... » read more

Challenges Mount For Interconnect


By Mark LaPedus There are a plethora of chip-manufacturing challenges for the 20nm node and beyond. When asked what are the top challenges facing leading-edge chip makers today, Gary Patton, vice president of the Semiconductor Research and Development Center at IBM, said it boils down to two major hurdles: lithography and the interconnect. The problems with lithography are well documented.... » read more

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