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Software:
IBM Announces World's Smallest
Working Silicon Transistor
IBM announced the smallest working silicon transistors using conventional
device structures. With this transistor, a mere 6nm in length This development
proves that silicon-based transistors can be scaled for at least another
decade, keeping Moore's Law valid and allowing electronic devices to continue
shrinking while increasing functionality at the same time. IBM has been able
to push silicon to limits not thought possible with techniques that can easily
apply to existing manufacturing lines.
This development proves that silicon-based transistors can be scaled for at
least another decade, keeping Moore's Law valid and allowing electronic
devices to continue shrinking while increasing functionality at the same
time.
Transistor scaling, or the reduction of the gate length (the size of the
switch that turns transistors on and off), improves the performance and speed
of chips as well as lowers their manufacturing cost and power consumption.
The IT industry has been scaling transistors the past 30 years in order to
fulfill consumer demand for smaller and more intelligent electronic devices.
However, for decades the industry started recognizing the limitations of
scaling, especially because doing so made it more difficult to turn the
transistors on and off.
IBM has been able to address this concern by developing 6nm gate length
transistors with ultra-thin silicon channels 4-8 nm thick, allowing the
transistors to shrink while their switches turn on and off easily. The
Consortium of International Semiconductor Companies in its 2001 International
Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors projected that transistors have to be
smaller than 9 nm by 2016 in order to meet market demand.
IBM is the first company to get transistors working below that gate length,
thereby extending the benefits of scaling by at least another decade. Dr.
Randall Isaac, vice president of science and technology, IBM Research,
said:
"By creating these ultra-small and ultra-thin transistors using
conventional
device structures, IBM has discovered techniques for scaling devices that
would not require huge capital investments, such as retooling manufacurting
lines." Creating the smallest transistors IBM researchers demonstrated these
world record ultra- thin silicon channel devices and circuits on bonded
silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafers with halo implants and 248-nm-wavelength
lithography.
The PFET Ion-Ioff performance is among the best for 14-nm gate length. With
more aggressive halo, the IBM team has produced the smallest working MOSFETs
reported to date, with 4nm silicon channel and 6-nm gate lengths. Because of
the extreme gate-length scaling, the ultra-thin channel ring-oscillator
circuits achieve the fastest speed at the given drive current.
IBM's work suggests that aggressive SOI thickness scaling is a promising
option to drive CMOS device scaling. IBM will present details of this research
breakthrough in a paper entitled, "Extreme Scaling with Ultra-thin Silicon
Channel MOSFETs" at the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) being
held this week in San Francisco.
This
project was a collaboration between IBM Research and IBM
Microelectronics.
About IBM's Research Division
IBM Research is one of the world's largest information technology research
organizations, with more than 3,000 scientists and engineers at eight labs in
six countries.
http://www.research.ibm.com
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