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14 Nanometer
The 14 nm process refers to the MOSFET technology node that is the successor to the 22nm (or 20nm) node. The 14nm was so named by the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS). Until about 2011, the node following 22nm was expected to be 16nm. All 14nm nodes use FinFET (fin field-effect transistor) technology, a type of multi-gate MOSFET technology that is a non-planar evolution of planar silicon CMOS technology. Samsung Electronics taped out a 14 nm chip in 2014, before manufacturing 10 nm class NAND flash chips in 2013. The same year, SK Hynix began mass-production of 16nm NAND flash, and TSMC began 16nm FinFET production. The following year, Intel began shipping 14nm scale devices to consumers. History Background The basis for sub-20nm fabrication is the FinFET (Fin field-effect transistor), an evolution of the MOSFET transistor. FinFET technology was pioneered by Digh Hisamoto and his team of researchers at Hitachi Central Research Laboratory in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MOSFET
The metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET, MOS-FET, or MOS FET) is a type of field-effect transistor (FET), most commonly fabricated by the controlled oxidation of silicon. It has an insulated gate, the voltage of which determines the conductivity of the device. This ability to change conductivity with the amount of applied voltage can be used for amplifying or switching electronic signals. A metal-insulator-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MISFET) is a term almost synonymous with MOSFET. Another synonym is IGFET for insulated-gate field-effect transistor. The basic principle of the field-effect transistor was first patented by Julius Edgar Lilienfeld in 1925.Lilienfeld, Julius Edgar (1926-10-08) "Method and apparatus for controlling electric currents" upright=1.6, Two power MOSFETs in V_in_the_''off''_state,_and_can_conduct_a_continuous_current_of_30 surface-mount_packages._Operating_as_switches,_each_of_these_components_can_su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Institute Of Electrical And Electronics Engineers
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operations center in Piscataway, New Jersey. The mission of the IEEE is ''advancing technology for the benefit of humanity''. The IEEE was formed from the amalgamation of the American Institute of Electrical Engineers and the Institute of Radio Engineers in 1963. Due to its expansion of scope into so many related fields, it is simply referred to by the letters I-E-E-E (pronounced I-triple-E), except on legal business documents. , it is the world's largest association of technical professionals with more than 423,000 members in over 160 countries around the world. Its objectives are the educational and technical advancement of electrical and electronic engineering, telecommunications, computer engineering and similar disciplines. History Origins ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semiconductor Fabrication Plant
In the microelectronics industry, a semiconductor fabrication plant (commonly called a fab; sometimes foundry) is a factory where devices such as integrated circuits are manufactured. Fabs require many expensive devices to function. Estimates put the cost of building a new fab over one billion U.S. dollars with values as high as $3–4 billion not being uncommon. TSMC invested $9.3 billion in its ''Fab15'' 300 mm wafer manufacturing facility in Taiwan. The same company estimations suggest that their future fab might cost $20 billion. A foundry model emerged in the 1990s: Foundries that produced their own designs were known as integrated device manufacturers (IDMs). Companies that farmed out manufacturing of their designs to foundries were termed fabless semiconductor companies. Those foundries, which did not create their own designs, were called pure-play semiconductor foundries. The central part of a fab is the clean room, an area where the environment is controlled to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arm Holdings
Arm is a British semiconductor and software design company based in Cambridge, England. Its primary business is in the design of ARM processors (CPUs). It also designs other chips, provides software development tools under the DS-5, RealView and Keil brands, and provides systems and platforms, system-on-a-chip (SoC) infrastructure and software. As a "holding" company, it also holds shares of other companies. Since 2016, it has been owned by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group. While ARM CPUs first appeared in the Acorn Archimedes, a desktop computer, today's systems include mostly embedded systems, including ARM CPUs used in virtually all smartphones. Systems such as iPhones and Android smartphones frequently include many chips, from many different providers, that include one or more licensed Arm cores, in addition to those in the main Arm-based processor. Arm's core designs are also used in chips that support all the most common network-related technologies. Processors ba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mentor Graphics
Siemens EDA is a US-based electronic design automation (EDA) multinational corporation for electrical engineering and electronics, headquartered in Wilsonville, Oregon. Founded in 1981 as Mentor Graphics, the company was acquired by Siemens in 2017. The company distributes products that assist in electronic design automation, simulation tools for analog mixed-signal design, VPN solutions, and fluid dynamics and heat transfer tools. The company leveraged Apollo Computer workstations to differentiate itself within the computer-aided engineering (CAE) market with its software and hardware. History Siemens EDA was founded as Mentor Graphics in 1981 by Tom Bruggere, Gerry Langeler, and Dave Moffenbeier, all formerly of Tektronix. The company raised $55 million in funding through an initial public offering in 1984. Mentor initially wrote software that ran only in Apollo workstations. When Mentor entered the CAE market the company had two technical differentiators: the first ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Synopsys
Synopsys is an American electronic design automation (EDA) company that focuses on silicon design and verification, silicon intellectual property and software security and quality. Products include tools for logic synthesis and physical design of integrated circuits, simulators for development and debugging environments that assist in the design of the logic for chips and computer systems. In recent years, Synopsys has expanded its products and services to include application security testing. Synopsys has gained attention due to its relationship with various Chinese state entities. In 2018, Synopsys formed a partnership with the People's Liberation Army National Defence University and, in 2022, the company came under investigation by the United States Department of Justice for technology transfers to sanctioned entities in China. History Synopsys was founded by Aart J de Geus and David Gregory in 1986 in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The company was initially est ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leakage (electronics)
In electronics, leakage is the gradual transfer of electrical energy across a boundary normally viewed as insulating, such as the spontaneous discharge of a charged capacitor, magnetic coupling of a transformer with other components, or flow of current across a transistor in the "off" state or a reverse-polarized diode. In capacitors Gradual loss of energy from a charged capacitor is primarily caused by electronic devices attached to the capacitors, such as transistors or diodes, which conduct a small amount of current even when they are turned off. Even though this off current is an order of magnitude less than the current through the device when it is on, the current still slowly discharges the capacitor. Another contributor to leakage from a capacitor is from the undesired imperfection of some dielectric materials used in capacitors, also known as ''dielectric leakage''. It is a result of the dielectric material not being a perfect insulator and having some non-zero conductivit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Low-κ Dielectric
In semiconductor manufacturing, a low-κ is a material with a small relative dielectric constant (κ, kappa) relative to silicon dioxide. Low-κ dielectric material implementation is one of several strategies used to allow continued scaling of microelectronic devices, colloquially referred to as extending Moore's law. In digital circuits, insulating dielectrics separate the conducting parts (wire interconnects and transistors) from one another. As components have scaled and transistors have gotten closer together, the insulating dielectrics have thinned to the point where charge build up and crosstalk adversely affect the performance of the device. Replacing the silicon dioxide with a low-κ dielectric of the same thickness reduces parasitic capacitance, enabling faster switching speeds (in case of synchronous circuits) and lower heat dissipation. In conversation such materials may be referred to as "low-k" (spoken "low-kay") rather than "low-κ" (low-kappa). Low-κ materials In in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Multiple Patterning
Multiple patterning (or multi-patterning) is a class of technologies for manufacturing integrated circuits (ICs), developed for photolithography to enhance the feature density. It is expected to be necessary for the 10 nm and 7 nm node semiconductor processes and beyond. The premise is that a single lithographic exposure may not be enough to provide sufficient resolution. Hence additional exposures would be needed, or else positioning patterns using etched feature sidewalls (using spacers) would be necessary. Even with single exposure having sufficient resolution, extra masks have been implemented for better patterning quality such as by Intel for line-cutting at its 45nm node or TSMC at its 28nm node. Even for electron-beam lithography, single exposure appears insufficient at ~10 nm half-pitch, hence requiring double patterning. Double patterning lithography was first demonstrated in 1983 by D.C. Flanders and N.N. Efremow. Since then several double patterning techn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hardmask
A hardmask is a material used in semiconductor processing as an etch mask instead of a polymer or other organic "soft" resist material. Hardmasks are necessary when the material being etched is itself an organic polymer. Anything used to etch this material will also etch the photoresist being used to define its patterning since that is also an organic polymer. This arises, for instance, in the patterning of low-κ dielectric insulation layers used in VLSI fabrication. Polymers tend to be etched easily by oxygen, fluorine, chlorine and other reactive gases used in plasma etching. Use of a hardmask involves an additional deposition process, and hence additional cost. First, the hardmask material is deposited and etched into the required pattern using a standard photoresist process. Following that the underlying material can be etched through the hardmask. Finally the hardmask is removed with a further etching process. Hardmask materials can be metal or dielectric. Silicon b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Immersion Lithography
Immersion lithography is a photolithography resolution enhancement technique for manufacturing integrated circuits (ICs) that replaces the usual air gap between the final lens and the wafer surface with a liquid medium that has a refractive index greater than one. The resolution is increased by a factor equal to the refractive index of the liquid. Current immersion lithography tools use highly purified water for this liquid, achieving feature sizes below 45 nanometers. ASML and Nikon are currently the only manufacturers of immersion lithography systems. History The idea for immersion lithography was patented in 1984 by Takanashi et al. It was also proposed by Taiwanese engineer Burn J. Lin and realized in the 1980s. In 2004, IBM's director of silicon technology, Ghavam Shahidi, announced that IBM planned to commercialize lithography based on light filtered through water. Immersion lithography is now being extended to sub-20nm nodes through the use of multiple patterning. Back ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Extreme Ultraviolet Lithography
Extreme ultraviolet lithography (also known as EUV or EUVL) is an optical lithography technology used in steppers, machines that make integrated circuits (ICs) for computers and other electronic devices. It uses a range of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) wavelengths, roughly spanning a 2% FWHM bandwidth about 13.5 nm, to produce a pattern by exposing reflective photomask to UV light which gets reflected onto a substrate covered by photoresist. It is widely applied in semiconductor device fabrication process. As of 2022, ASML Holding is the only company who produces and sells EUV systems for chip production, targeting 5 nm and 3 nm. At the 2019 International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), TSMC reported use of EUV for 5 nm in contact, via, metal line, and cut layers, where the cuts can be applied to fins, gates or metal lines. At IEDM 2020, TSMC reported their 5 nm minimum metal pitch to be reduced 30% from that of 7 nm, which was 40 nm. Samsung's 5&nbs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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