Promising Materials Beyond Silicon (TI, AIXTRON, imec)


A new technical paper titled "Future materials for beyond Si integrated circuits: a Perspective" was published by researchers at Texas Instruments, AIXTRON SE and imec. Abstract: "The integration of novel materials has been pivotal in advancing Si-based devices ever since Si became the preferred material for transistors, and later, integrated circuits. New materials have rapidly been adopte... » read more

Wrestling With Variation In Advanced Node Designs


Variation is becoming a major headache at advanced nodes, and issues that used to be dealt with in the fab now must be dealt with on the design side, as well. What is fundamentally changing is that margin, which has long been used as a buffer for variation and other manufacturing process-related problems, no longer works in these leading-edge designs for a couple of reasons. First, margin im... » read more

Back-End-of-Line (BEOL) Metallization


Physical Vapor Deposition (PVD) for Back-End-of-Line (BEOL) metallization is being pushed to the limits at the 16-nanometer (nm) technology node and beyond. Extending PVD for metal liner and barrier seed deposition is forcing the process into a narrow window that must be characterized prior to manufacturing introduction. Furthermore, understanding the liner dependency on the trench and via etch... » read more