Sealing the Gate
Silicon dioxide has done the job for over 30 years, but is rapidly reaching its fundamental limits. Now Intel Corp. says it’s found new materials that will let transistors perform better so processors can keep following Moore’s Law into the future. While the industry has been hunting replacement materials for some time, Intel says it’s the first to overcome technical difficulties that have barred practical implementation.
Silicon’s problem is electric current leakage: As ever more transistors are packed onto ever smaller chips — Intel has whittled transistors’ gate-dielectric insulator to as little as 1.2 nanometers or five atomic layers thick — leakage increases, wasting current and generating unnecessary heat. To keep electrons flowing where they should, the company has identified a new high-k gate dielectric that reduces leakage by more than 100 times.
Since the high-k dielectric is incompatible with the gates that turn transistors on and off, Intel researchers have found a new metal gate material that maintains high performance. The chipmaker says it’s developed record-setting transistors using the combination of high-k dielectric and metal gates, and can integrate the new materials into economical, high-volume manufacturing processes, targeting the 45nm process it has scheduled for 2007.