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Technology Stocks : Applied Materials No-Politics Thread (AMAT) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bookdon who wrote (9366)	4/6/2004 2:42:46 PM
From: Proud_Infidel	Respond to of 25522

Novel transistors, new memories under scrutiny By David Lammers Silicon Strategies 04/06/2004, 2:23 PM ET DALLAS -- The 2004 International Reliability Physics Symposium, planned for April 25-29 in Phoenix, will consider reliability challenges facing the semiconductor industry as it moves to multigate logic devices and memories based on new material types. Hans Stork, the chief technology officer at Texas Instruments Inc. (Dallas), will kick off the plenary sessions on April 27 with a keynote address on the reliability challenges of sub-100-nanometer system-on-chip devices. Immediately following, Jim Stathis, a well-published oxide researcher at IBM Corp., will discuss negative-bias temperature instability (NBTI) stress in p-FETs with ultrathin oxides. Stathis will present an IBM research team's study of the energy distribution of interface states in nitrided oxides, and the relation to NBTI- induced threshold-voltage shifts. A plenary session on the reliability issues surrounding novel MOSFET structures and processes will consider hot-carrier effects and NBTI in novel transistors. A Samsung Electronics paper will consider the NBTI sensitivity of triple-gate p-FETs, possibly the first time NBTI in the multigate transistors may appear in the published literature. Interconnects have been the cause of plenty of reliability challenges since the industry switched to copper and low-k dielectrics. An IBM paper will discuss failure mechanisms in the SiLK dielectric that IBM attempted to implement at the 130-nm node. For the 90-nm process that it is co-developing with Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd., IBM is using an IBM-modified form of the Black Diamond dielectric, which the company refers to as Sicoh (silicon-carbon-oxygen-hydrogen). Several papers at IRPS will consider stress-induced voiding in chips made with low-k dielectrics. C.J. Zhai, an engineer at Advanced Micro Devices Inc., will discuss AMD's investigation of voids introduced in isolated vias created with a dual-damascene copper and low-k process. The AMD paper will present modeling of the void nucleation in fine-line-width devices. Y.K. Lim will present work by a team of engineers from Chartered Semiconductor and Nanyang Technological University on voids within and at the bottom of a copper via. The voids are generated through small defects that arise during processing. The Singapore-based researchers studied how the defects can grow during thermal stressing, and how they can be further exacerbated by copper contraction during cooling. The situation worsens when low-k dielectrics are brought in, and Lim will discuss process improvements that can substantially enhance via robustness. The symposium also will include sessions on static discharge, latchup mechanisms and high-k dielectrics. A team of researchers from Toshiba Corp., Japan's largest chip vendor, will present work on its form of hafnium silicate and the challenges of electron trapping, hot-carrier effects and electron tunneling. A session on reliability in new forms of memory devices includes papers on magnetoresistive and ferroelectric RAMs and phase-change memories. A paper from B. Hughes of Infineon Technologies AG will consider the reliability issues in MRAM, while FRAMs will be discussed in a joint paper from Texas Instruments and Ramtron International Corp. The TI-Ramtron team looked at 70-nm PZT films for low-voltage arrays, and reports on the passivation and recovery behavior. To complete the trifecta, an STMicroelectronics team based in Agrate Brianza, Italy, will consider reliability effects in the chalcogenide materials used in phase-change memories. Other sessions will consider the reliability issues of MEMS, RF and microwave circuits. The symposium is sponsored by the IEEE Reliability Society and the IEEE Electron Devices Society. The Phoenix event will be the 42nd meeting of the symposium. More information is available from the 2004 general chair, Bernie Pietrucha (pietrucha@rowen.edu).