Intel says it has gate high-k and metal
"This is the first convincing demonstration that new gate materials will enable transistors to perform better, while overcoming the fundamental limits of the silicon dioxide gate dielectric material that has served the industry for more than three decades," says Sunlin Chou, general manager of the Technology and Manufacturing Group.
Together, the new gate and gate dielectric materials reduce the current leakage that leads to wasted battery power and generates unwanted heat.
"Intel will use this advancement along with other innovations, such as strained silicon and tri-gate transistors, to extend transistor scaling and Moore's Law," says Chou.
Silicon dioxide gate dielectrics have been successfully used down to thicknesses as small as 1.2nm - about five atomic layers. As the silicon dioxide material gets thinner, electric current leakage through the dielectric increases and leads to energy waste as heat. The semiconductor industry plans to replace silicon dioxide with a thicker high-k material as the gate dielectric to reducing this leakage.
The second part of the solution is the development of a metal gate material, since the high-k gate dielectric is not compatible with today's transistor gate structure.
Intel believes that these new discoveries can be integrated into an economical, high-volume manufacturing process, and is now moving this transistor research into the development phase. Transistors with these new materials are an option targeted to be integrated into future Intel processors as early as 2007, as part of the company's 45nm manufacturing process.
Intel gave details of the development of new transistor materials at the International Workshop on Gate Insulator in Tokyo, Japan.
