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Research > Process Technology
Silicon Process Technology - Silicon Technology and Device Integration)

In the IMEC Silicon divisions research and development is carried out on the materials, technological steps and modules, advanced structures and new components that will be needed for the next generations of deep-submicron CMOS integrated circuits.

These activities are largely driven by the requirements as dictated by the acceleration of the ITRS roadmap (International technology Roadmap for Semiconductors) which predicts that for the future technology generations (90nm down to 32nm in 2013), the transistor gate length will continue to be scaled by a factor of 0.7 every 2 to 3 years. Recent predictions refer to MPU's by the year 2016 with transistor gate length of only 9nm and clock frequencies of 29GHz.

The materials that are studied in the S-divisions include Si and SiGe epitaxy, high-k dielectrics (k-values higher than 10) to replace the traditional SiO2 as the gate dielectric, low-k materials (k-values between 1 and 2) for use in Cu-based multilayer interconnects on chip, different types of metals for use as gate electrode, new silicides, ferroelectric materials, and many others. For each of these materials the goal is not only to optimize their physical properties for the intended use but also to ensure their compatibility with the Si technology.

The basic processing steps and modules unders study within IMEC are optical lithography (248nm, 193nm, 157nm and Extreme UV) and e-beam lithography, dry etching, shallow junctions, isolation, metallization and cleaning processes. Moreover also ES&H (Environment, Safety and Health) aspects receive ample attention.

For the advanced structures and new components, the activities focus on the one hand on the ultimate scaling of the MOSFET concept with channel lengths well below 20nm and on the other hand on new architectures that could eventually replace the classical concepts in the ultimate generations in case these would no longer allow to provide increased performance by scaling. In addition to the basic CMOS function, components and modules are investigated that can be embedded in the CMOS technology and provide extended functionality. These encompass advanced bipolar transistors for HF applications, non-volatile memory cells, sensors, passive components, a.s.o. For all these advanced components, there is ample emphasis on the viability of the approaches and on the reliability of the concepts.

Finally there is an increasing number of activities on nanostructures which include Single Electron memories, Q-bits, a.s.o.