(Dielectric Science & Technology Thomas Callinan Award) Materials and Processes As Enablers for Moore Moore and Beyond Moore Technologies

Abstract

In this presentation, an overview will be presented of historic and recent developments achieved w.r.t. materials and processes that enabled continued performance scaling of CMOS and beyond CMOS applications. Starting from early high-k work. For decades, thermal oxidation of crystalline Silicon into SiO2 has been the gate oxide material in CMOS technology. Miniaturization for performance improvement, required the gate dielectric to decrease in thickness to support the required increase in capacitance (per unit area) and drive current (per device width). Early 2000, the thickness scaled below 1.5 nm, causing drastically increased leakage currents, high power consumption and reduced device reliability. Replacing the SiO2 gate dielectric with a high-κ (dielectric constant) material allows increased gate capacitance without the associated leakage effects. Activities involved the unit process step development of dielectric and metal deposition processes, advanced interface preparation, electrical and physical characterization and wet and dry etch process development. In a second section, emphasis will be on emerging nanomaterials. Nanotechnology is defined as the manipulation of matter with at least one dimension sized from below 100nm, thus all CMOS activities are functional nanotechnology. The latter concentrated initially on Graphene, but extended further towards Transition Metal Dicalchogenide Materials. Emphasis of the work will be on growth, functionalization, dielectric passivation and doping of these materials. Lastly, expanding on the nanomaterial know-how also progress with regard to low-k dielectrics, area selective deposition processes (for bottom-up lithography) and application of nanochemistry research for photoresist material screening, where chemical interactions at the nanoscale, related to the EUV lithography (radiation chemistry) are hampering the pattern scaling.Throughout the presentation, recognition will be given to people (PhD students) that contributed to this work and the presentation is also in honor of Prof Dolf Landheer and Professor Samares Kar with whom I organized my first ECS symposium.