Future semiconductor material requirements and innovations as projected in the ITRS 2005 roadmap

Abstract

The international technology roadmap for semiconductors (ITRS) is a joint global effort of the semiconductor industry, the manufacturing equipment and material industry and the research community and consortia to define the future requirements and development of the semiconductor technology for the next 15 years. The ITRS started in 1992 as a US-national roadmap and became an international effort in 1998 with all major five industrial global regions (US, Japan, Taiwan, Korea and Europe) participating in its definition. The outlook in semiconductor manufacturing expects the continuous application of silicon technology for the next 15 years where complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) based devices will carry the development of the industry at least for one more decade. New device architectures and concepts based on silicon wafer material are being developed to support the development of the IC industry for another one or two decade. The major section of the ITRS contains technical information about frontend processing and interconnects, device structures and memory concepts, lithography and metrology as well as factory integration and environmental issues. This paper will review the material requirements and the expected material innovations for the industry as outlined in the ITRS Version 2005. Materials to be discussed are, for example, high permittivity gate dielectrics, insulating layers with low dielectric constants for interconnects, and capacitor dielectrics for dynamic memories. In addition, the paper will address, for example, new transistor gate materials, new solutions for interconnect systems beyond copper as well as new starting materials for wafer sizes beyond 300 mm. This publication was presented as an invited paper in the Symposium V of the 2006 spring meeting of the European Materials Research Society (E-MRS) in Nice, May 29th.