Invited tutorial: Advanced CMOS transistor technology: Past, present and future

Almost half a century later, Gordon Moore's accurate observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles every two years continues to be the guiding principle of the semiconductor industry. We have almost taken for granted the apparent corollary; as transistor count increases, each transistor becomes smaller, faster and cheaper. Today, the transistor physical gate length in production is less than 30 nanometer; further brute-force geometric scaling of conventional silicon devices limit faces many fundamental challenges — rising energy consumption, power density and worsening device to device fluctuation being some of the foremost barriers. In this tutorial, I will present the amazing journey of the logic transistor in the last ten years starting with strained channel CMOS transistors, the high-k/metal-gate silicon CMOS transistors and the multiple-gate transistor architecture. Then, I will review the recent breakthroughs in non-silicon (compound semiconductor and germanium) based quantum-well transistor research that are promising transistor architecture for the next decade. I will also describe our research efforts in a new genre of “green” transistors that work on the quantum-mechanical band to band tunneling principle called Tunnel transistors and can operate with the record low energy delay product. Finally, interaction of emerging devices with the circuit and system architecture will also be discussed. This talk will summarize the twenty-first century logic transistor innovations that have and will continue to enhance the energy efficiency and performance of information processing systems through materials, device physics and architectural innovations.