conference report  IEDM


S


ilicon is running out of steam. Using this material to maintain the march of Moore’s law is getting more and more challenging, and engineers are now close to exhausting their list of options for realizing device improvements that must come with every round of scaling. They have already turned to new, novel oxides to stop leakage currents from escalating; they have introduced strain to zip electrons and holes through the channels at higher speeds; and most recently, they have re-written the rulebook for transistor design and started to manufacture a three-dimensional MOSFET, known as either a Tri-Gate device or a FinFET, in order to enhance electrostatic control. Next on the agenda is to scale these 22 nm devices to the 16 nm node, but beyond that, a more radical approach is needed to maintain the performance improvements wrought from the introduction of every new node, such as a 20 percent power reduction per transistor.


Trimming power consumption, which prevents IC overheating, is not a trivial task. That’s because power consumption depends on several factors. At lengths scales of 90 nm and above, most losses result from dynamic power consumption, which is proportional to the clock frequency and the square of the transistor’s operating voltage. But at the smaller nodes, leakage currents dominate. These are proportional to the operating voltage, and can result from leakage at the gate, the junction and the source-drain region.


Reducing the operating voltage is the best way to maintain Moore’s law to the 11 nm node and beyond, because this minimises dynamic power consumption and leakage currents. Cutting the operating voltage of silicon transistors, which now operate at about 1.1 V, is very tricky, but big reductions are possible by introducing new materials with higher mobilities. The most promising ones are listed in the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS). Turning to the combination of III-Vs for the electron channel and germanium for the hole channel is seen as the most likely way forward, because this pair of materials combine high mobilities with a significant level of maturity.


34 www.compoundsemiconductor.net January / February 2013


Silicon’s successor starts shaping up


The most promising building blocks for the 11 nm node are the pairing of III-V and germanium transistors. Device development is still in its infancy, but research presented at IEDM 2012 indicates that significant progress is being made. Richard Stevenson reports.


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