Advanced-node FET/HEMT transistors
Units: Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) & Varian Ion Implant Units, Semiconductor Products Group
Institution: Applied Materials Inc., Santa Clara
Patents:
• Techniques based on directional seeding & selective deposition (Part-1: US11956978B2)
• Techniques based on directional seeding & selective deposition (Part-2: US20240040808A1)
• Techniques for void-free material depositions (Part-1: US11749564B2)
• Techniques for void-free material depositions (Part-2: US12131948B2)
• Metal line patterning (US11404314B2)
• Devices and methods for variable etch depths (US20220100078A1)
• Techniques for variable deposition profiles (US20220119955A1)
Introduction
I am a Process Engineer working on developing ultra-thin (<10A) deposition and growth processes for materials in advanced-node transistor (<1.2nm) structures for GAAFET and HEMT applications. Methods I utilize for this are Atomic-layer deposition (ALD), Atomic-layer epitaxy (ALE), and Atomic-layer etch (ALE). I was previously a co-op intern at AMAT as well in the Varian ion implant division, where I worked on Plasma-enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PE-CVD) and Reactive ion etching (RIE) of metals and dielectrics.
Necessity and Challenges:
Transistor scaling has hit a fundamental quantum limit, leading to the breakdown of Moore’s law in today’s semiconductor nodes (<2nm). Reasons for this are:
• Quantum tunneling and leakage
• Issues in thermal scaling (as each transistor gets smaller, the heat generated consists a larger portion of total energy consumption and generation) in addition to difficulties in efficient heat-dissipation at smaller nodes
• Manufacturing challenges in lithography, implant, deposition and etch at the smallest nodes
• Short-channel effects at small sizes
All of these challenges necessitate a rapid inflection to vertical (3D) architectures for both logic (compute) and memory (DRAM/NAND etc.) chips. This can only be brought about with the extremely thin-layer formation possible using techniques like ALD and Epitaxy (Often between 5-15 Angstroms) in concert with atomic-scale tolerance etch techniques.