Scaling-driven nanoelectronics

Transistors (front-end)

• Transistor gates (shallow junctions)
• New materials (high-k, metal gates, strain)
• New architectures (multi-gate field effect transistors)

Invent - Imec develops transistors with several gates, based on the 3-dimensional fin-based multi-gate architecture (FinFET).
The distinguishing characteristic of the FinFET is that the conducting channel is wrapped around a thin silicon fin, which forms the body of the device. The dimensions of the fin determine the effective channel length of the device. With FinFETs, there is a better control of the short channel effects. And FinFETs are a candidate architecture for further scaling.

Achieve - Together with NXP, imec reported excellent performance and short channel effect control for tall, narrow FinFETs without mobility enhancement. Using laser-only annealing on FinFETs resulted in a possible candidate technology for the 22nm node.