A Preview of Semicon West 2013
06/03/2013
DEBRA VOGLER, SEMI, San Jose, CA
Semicon West 2013, to be held July 9-11 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, will feature over 500 exhibitors, 50 hours of conference programs and more than 30,000 industry attendees. Hot topics to be discussed at the show include dynamic changes to R&D processes, tools, technical challenges, and funding/business models.
The critical processes and technologies necessary to continue Moore's Law are currently more uncertain than ever before in the history of advanced semiconductor manufacturing. At Semicon West, SEMI will provide multiple forums to assess these uncertainties and provide the latest information on EUV lithography, 3D transistors, 450mm wafer processing, and other challenges.
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| Intel's Shekhar Borkar talks at a TechXPOT session. |
Although progress to take EUV lithography into the realm of high-volume manufacturing continues to be made, the readiness of source technologies, mask infrastructure and resist performance are still not known with a high degree of certainty. Until EUV Lithography is ready for high-volume manufacturing, the industry will continue to rely on double-patterning and even multiple-patterning lithography schemes using 193 immersion technology to take it beyond 22nm. How the industry will address these barriers, uncertainties and alternatives will be the focus the lithography session at SEMICON West ??? including the following speakers and topics:
??? Skip Miller, ASML ??? NXE Platform Performance and Volume Introduction
??? Stefan Wurm, Ph.D., SEMATECH ??? Mask and Resist Infrastructure Gaps
??? Ben Rathsack, Tokyo Electron ??? Advances in Directed Self-Assembly Integration and Manufacturability on 300mm Wafers
??? Mike Rieger, Synopsys ??? Collaboration to Deliver Lithography Solutions
??? Nikon Precision ??? ArF Lithography Extension Through Advanced Overlay and Imaging Solutions
The mobile market is driving the move to novel transistor architectures that offer greater performance and power benefits than traditional planar architectures. Memory and logic manufacturers are pursuing different strategies including leveraging innovations in design rules, new channel materials and processes (e.g., MOCVD) and inspection and metrology challenges. Speakers and topics on the challenges of nonplanar transistor processing include:
??? Gary Patton, Ph.D., IBM Semiconductor Research and Development Center ??? Meeting the Challenges of Next-Generation Scaling
??? Subramani Kengeri, GLOBALFOUNDRIES ??? Enabling SoC Level Differentiation Through Advanced Technology R&D
??? Michel Haond, STMicroelectronics ??? Main Features and Benefits of 14nm Ultra Thin Body and BOX (UTBB) Fully Depleted SOI (FD-SOI) Technology
??? Paul Kirsch, Ph.D., SEMATECH ??? Non-Silicon R&D Challenges and Opportunities
??? Adam Brand, Applied Materials ??? Precision Materials to Meet FinFET Scaling Challenges Beyond 14nm
??? Joe Sawicki, Mentor Graphics ??? New Approaches to Improving Quality and Accelerating Yield Ramp for FinFET Technology
While materials, architecture and processing technologies are undergoing revolutionary change, wafer processing platforms are also being radically transformed with a planned transition to 450mm wafers. For chip manufacturers and suppliers, this will involve increased levels of collaboration, further advancements in tool prototypes, and increased visibility into related supply chain implications. The SEMICON West 450 Transition Forum will provide the latest updates on the status of 450 R&D, as well as a review of key technology considerations and a discussion of implications and opportunities for the supply chain.
Each of these programs will take place in the TechXPOT conference sessions on the exhibit floor. Other TechXPOT programs include sessions on 2.5D and 3D IC Packaging, Productivity Innovation at Existing 200mm/300mm Fabs, Silicon Photonics, Lab-to-Fab Solutions, MEMS, LED Manufacturing, and Printed and Flexible Electronics.
Sub-20nm front-end challenges
In advance of the 2013 SEMICON West TechXPOTs on lithography and nonplanar transistors beyond 20nm, SEMI asked some of the speakers to comment on the challenges they wanted to highlight.
Just as a boxer avoids a surprise shot to the head or torso by using a "duck and weave" maneuver, so to must front-end technologists confront the challenges associated with extending optical lithography while planning for EUV lithography's eventual high-productivity solution. For the industry, particularly foundries that generally need to handle multiple platforms for a variety of customers ??? there is the added pile-on arising from developing the two paths to accomplish control of short channel effects and leakage in transistors beyond 20nm, i.e., ultra-thin silicon-over-insulator (SOI)-based technologies and FinFETs. This year's SEMICON West front-end processing TechXPOTs on lithograph and transistors below 20nm will provide critical updates on how technologists are coping with these "contenders."
Channel materials: a progression of SiGe alloys
Whether an IC manufacturer chooses to make the giant leap to 3D transistors (e.g., the tri-gate), or takes an evolutionary approach (e.g., using SOI-based technology as a bridge), all roads lead to the implementation of 3D transistor architectures. No matter the path, however, new channel materials will have to be developed. Paul Kirsch, director of the Front-end Process Division at SEMATECH, anticipates that there will be a progressive range of Germanium (Ge) being added to Si ??? from perhaps 25 percent Ge up to 100 percent Ge ??? to form channels in pMOS FETs first, followed by nMOS FETs for logic applications. "Industry has a great deal of experience with SiGe already," notes Kirsch. "It's understood how to handle that material in the fab and it's well understood and had good performance benefits in the pMOS FET." What does need more attention, however, is making SiGe work for the nMOS FET ??? particularly for contacts and gates. Kirsch further anticipates seeing SiGe entering the roadmap between the 14nm, 10nm, and 7nm nodes, with the possibility that some IC manufacturers could start even sooner than 14nm.
A major hurdle that has to be overcome in the implementation of III-V materials is being able to engineer out the defects from the epitaxial material and the surrounding architecture of the fin to reduce the leakage current. Molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) is too expensive mainly because of its low throughput. This will mean improving what Kirsch says is the preferred process ??? metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). In addition to engineering out defects, the industry will have to fully understand ESH issues because the source materials for this process are toxic and pyrophoric. "That's not to say they can't be understood and handled safely because we have toxic and pyrophoric materials in the fab already, but every process is a little different and attention needs to be given to these materials to make sure that we are handling them very safely," says Kirsch.
Staying with a planar solution
STMicroelectronics' marketing director of Technology R&D for the Digital Sector, Giorgio Cesana, told SEMI that regardless of the many techniques to extend the technology roadmap, conventional planar bulk technology is reaching its limits. "The last node will be 20nm because it is unable to provide the traditional speed/power gain vs. the 28nm node," said Cesana. To continue to follow the Moore's Law roadmap, the industry has developed new techniques to produce fully-depleted transistors that overcome traditional bulk planar limits. There are two possibilities: stay on a planar (2D) transistor structure obtaining fully-depleted devices using a thin SOI substrate, or move to FinFET 3D structures.
"STMicroelectronics has opted for the planar solution built on a thin silicon film above a thin buried oxide layer, which is simpler to manufacture while still offering the same fully-depleted benefits," explained Cesana. With the company's 28nm FD-SOI node in production, it is now focusing on the development of the next node. "At 14nm, this will implement a set of new features for further increasing performances while optimizing power consumption and operating at reduced voltage levels."
Test and diagnosis at 16/14nm and beyond
As the industry moves to 3D transistor architectures, Joe Sawicki, VP and GM of the Design-to-Silicon Division at Mentor Graphics, observes that at 16/14nm, "You're not just dealing with scaling, you're dealing with fundamental changes in the transistor and cell architectures. How defects will manifest themselves and behave in these new architectures is still an unknown." The key, he pointed out, is going after potential defects at the transistor level using a test generation technology that looks into the standard cell itself (i.e., cell-aware automatic test pattern generation (ATPG)). "Unlike the standard test pattern generation used today that just looks at the logical boundary of the cell and tries to ensure that all the interconnects are wired correctly, cell-aware ATPG takes that one step further by looking into the standard cell transistor structures to test and ensure that all the individual transistors and the connections between them are functional."
Though defects that might be unique to FinFET structures below 16nm are still to be determined, Sawicki explains that cell-aware ATPG is capable of defining both static and dynamic fault models on the transistor structures, as well as on the cell-internal interconnect. "It has already been successful in finding defects at other nodes that the traditional fault models miss," said Sawicki.
As cell-aware testing goes from 20nm to 14nm, Sawicki anticipates that the only evolution in going to the next node will be in the SPICE level model characterization to create the initial cell-aware fault models. "Defects in FinFET transistors may cause different behaviors and require slightly different fault models to detect them," said Sawicki. "Since the cell-aware technology starts with a transistor level cell characterization step to create the fault model, it's expected that from a usage and ATPG process point of view, there should be little additional evolution to the technology for FinFET technology."
Debra Volger is a contributing editor to SEMI, San Jose, CA and president of Instant Insights.