Demonstrating its successes in semiconductor research and development, AMD will present several new technical achievements critical to the creation of next-generation transistors and memory cells at this year’s International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) held in San Francisco, December 8-11. Aspects of the research may be used in products as early as 2005.

Below are described the main topics of AMD’s demonstration.

Next-Generation Transistors

At IEDM, AMD will present three technical papers outlining recent achievements in their ongoing research on future transistor structures. The primary working parts of a microchip, transistors are basically a microscopic switch that uses a “gate” to turn the flow of electrical current on and off. AMD will provide details on research conducted with University of California, Berkley on a new transistor device type that could replace today’s planar transistors as the industry standard for high-performance logic chips.

Known in the microchip industry as a Fin Field Effect Transistor (FinFET), this new structure uses a single vertical silicon "fin" to create two gates instead of one. This effectively doubles the electrical current that can be sent through the transistor and improves the transistor’s switching characteristics. This efficient and practical design enables enhanced performance and ever-shrinking geometries, while retaining a high degree of manufacturability using existing methods.

In September 2002 AMD already demonstrated FinFET with a gate length of 10nm, or 10 billionths of a meter, less than 1/5th the size of the most advanced transistor in production today.

AMD will also present two papers on the company’s success in building transistors with gates made from metal, rather than polysilicon as is the standard today. This research is aimed at maximizing transistor performance for the company’s fabrication processes in the 2005 timeframe and beyond. This nickel-based gate technology holds promise for dramatically increasing transistor performance by improving electrical current flow through the transistor. When properly implemented, metal gates eliminate today’s practice of placing impurities in the channel under the transistor’s gate to achieve optimum switching characteristics. The removal of these impurities results in better electrical current flow, which in turn increases the transistor’s performance capabilities. Further, these nickel-based gates are expected to provide a lower cost manufacturing option when compared to other metal gate technologies being investigated in the industry.

Future Flash Memory

AMD, in conjunction with Stanford University, will also present a paper demonstrating a new Flash memory cell structure that could be instrumental in scaling Flash memory beyond the 65nm generation.

The new structure uses minute “nanowires” of polysilicon measuring as small as 5nm wide to store an electrical charge. At these small dimensions the memory cells demonstrate true quantum mechanical behaviour, providing erase speeds several orders of magnitude faster than conventional Flash memory cells, while exhibiting excellent data retention. This technology could enable larger amounts of memory to be incorporated into a single Flash memory chip, while at the same time dramatically increasing speed and reducing the power needed to read and write to the cell.