News Article
Riber and imec continue to merge III-Vs with CMOS
The two organisations aim to advance CMOS devices using high-mobility Germanium and III-V compound semiconductor channels
MBE kit supplier Riber has signed an agreement with R&D institute imec to continue to collaborate on developing epitaxy process technologies for next-generation III-V CMOS devices.
The agreement follows a successful collaboration in the field of advanced channel materials for high-performance CMOS scaling, Germanium and III-V compound semiconductor materials.
In the quest for miniaturisation, technology has come to a point where CMOS scaling beyond the 45 nm node cannot be achieved by simply reducing transistor dimensions. What's more, the need for small form factors coupled with the stringent requirement of low current leakage or low energy performance has become critical, especially in next-generation mobile devices.
Imec and its core partners on the Germanium and III-V devices program are exploring the efficacy of high-mobility channel materials for CMOS devices for advanced nodes. Together with Riber, the bottleneck issue of gate stack passivation have been tackled, resulting in effective passivation techniques for Germanium and GaAs.
Riber’s 200 mm III-V and metal oxide MBE cluster offered the required extremely clean background and absence of any interfering gas phase components, enabling material and interface control on the atomic level.
This resulted in the successful development of a passivation scheme for the MOS gate stack module. Amongst others, it was shown that controlling the GaAs surface reconstruction followed by a H2S passivation treatment and in-situ high-k deposition was crucial to create a well-passivated MOS structure with record-low interfacial state density. What's more, the world’s first successful MOS capacitors on a new high-mobility candidate material, GeSn, were made in the 200 mm Riber MBE cluster.
In the new project, the suitability of Riber’s 300 mm UHV chamber (ISA300), equipped with in-situ tools for surface analysis, and clustered with 300mm Si CMOS production equipment, will be evaluated for the production of advanced CMOS devices based on high-mobility Germanium and III-V channels.
The project has three main aims. Firstly Riber’s UHV chamber will be analysed for its control of surface structures. The collaboration will also see how moving from a research environment 200 mm platform to a 300 mm fab will affect gate stack passivation. The final target is to demonstrate the technological viability of a 300 mm MBE-module, clustered with ‘standard’ 300 mm Si CMOS production equipment.
Frédérick Goutard, Riber CEO comments, “Participating in early stage research is intrinsic to Riber’s aim to strengthen our leading position in the compound semiconductor industry. MBE is considered to be most efficient technology to leverage compound semiconductors towards high-end applications with a tremendous market potential, such as mobile phones, telecom, automotive, satellite, .... Using our ISA300 chamber in a 300 mm cluster configuration will allow for higher performance in terms of devices operating at high frequencies with reduced energy consumption, etc. We are therefore convinced that this project will clearly demonstrate the attractiveness of our technology in the production of next generations CMOS devices.”
Hans Lebon, VP of fab operations and process step R&D at imec adds, “Through the collaboration with Riber, imec can integrate the power of UHV-systems into state-of-the-art semiconductors production equipment on large diameter wafers. This will allow the application of powerful in-situ surface analysis tools in CVD and ALD equipment which so far was not feasible due to the gas phase environment. Also, MBE-like UHV-techniques for interface control and passivation come in reach which will benefit the development of next generation CMOS technologies.”
