3 Ways To Reload Moore’s Law


The electronics revolution has been enabled because the cost and power per transistor has decreased 30% per year for the last 30 years — a fact usually associated with Moore's Law. This has been accomplished by simply reducing the transistor size while offsetting increased costs of equipment and mask levels, and by increased productivity from improved yield, throughput and wafer size. This... » read more

The Roadmap To 5nm


By Debra Vogler Among the challenges the semiconductor industry will be facing as it moves down the path to node 5 are resistance-capacitance (RC) management and integration. SEMI is pleased to announce a SEMICON West 2015 STS technical program exploring these and other high-volume manufacturing challenges. According to An Steegen, SVP of Process Technology at imec, the list of RC managemen... » read more

DSA Defects Continue Downward Trend


As previously discussed, the majority of defects in early directed self-assembly (DSA) processes were due to particles and other contaminants, and could be attributed to the immaturity of the process and materials. As manufacturers consider whether to incorporate DSA into specific technology nodes, they need to assure themselves that production-worthy yields can be achieved. Recent research at ... » read more

How To Extend Litho Scaling


IC mask [getkc id="80" comment="lithography"] today is sophisticated and complex. It's also a work in progress with a lot of unknowns as the industry struggles to increase productivity while reducing risk. The bulk of the work currently is focused on trying to figure out what would be a practical scheme for patterning lithography that could be used at 10nm and 7nm, said Gandharv Bhatara, Ca... » read more

Integrating DSA


As previous articles in this series have shown, directed self-assembly may be a promising alternative for manufacturers seeking to shrink feature sizes in the face of a stalled exposure tool roadmap. It is simpler than some other frequency-multiplication techniques, can be implemented with existing equipment, and does not appear to introduce insurmountable defect issues of its own. Which does n... » read more

DSA Moves Ahead


It can be difficult to make DSA structures other than uniform arrays. One solution is to print a grating over a large area, then use a “cut” mask to eliminate the unwanted features. The challenge, though, is that aligning the cut mask to an array of tightly spaced features, such as the fins for a FinFET transistor layer, can require extremely demanding overlay specifications. While reducing... » read more

Counting And Controlling DSA Defects


If directed self-assembly is to succeed in semiconductor manufacturing, [gettech id="31046" t_name="DSA"] processes must achieve defect rates in line with the stringent requirements of sub-20nm device nodes. So far, they haven’t. However, it’s not yet clear whether the high defect rates represent a real obstacle, or are simply part of the development of any new, immature process technology... » read more

Litho Options Sparse After 10nm


Leading-edge foundries are ramping up their 16nm/14nm logic processes, with 10nm and 7nm in R&D. Barring a major breakthrough in [getkc id="80" comment="lithography"], chipmakers will use 193nm immersion and multiple patterning for both 16nm/14nm and 10nm. So now, chipmakers are focusing on the lithography options for 7nm. As before, the options include the usual suspects—[gettech id="... » read more

The Key To DSA


The block co-polymer most commonly used in directed self-assembly research ([gettech id="31046" t_name="DSA"]), PS-b-PMMA (poly(styrene-block-methyl methacrylate) is an excellent choice because the two component monomers have similar surface energies. The exposed top surface of the film helps to stabilize the segregated domains, making it relatively easy to achieve the lamellar line-and-space p... » read more

What Will That DSA Template Do, Anyway?


As directed self assembly techniques make the transition from line and space test patterns to the more complex structures seen in real devices, modeling is emerging as a significant issue. How will the co-polymers behave in the presence of a particular template pattern? While several laboratory-scale modeling methods exist, most are too computationally expensive to be used for large area str... » read more

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