Applied Materials, Inc., Santa Clara, Calif., the leader in materials engineering for the semiconductor industry, introduced two chipmaking systems designed to create the smallest features in the world’s most advanced logic chips. By controlling materials deposition with atomic-level precision, the technologies enable chipmakers to build faster and more power-efficient transistors at the scale required to sustain the pace of today’s global AI infrastructure buildout.
Driven by surging demand for AI compute, the semiconductor industry is pushing the limits of scaling to squeeze more energy-efficient performance from each of the hundreds of billions of transistors in a processor chip. To address this challenge, the world’s leading logic chipmakers are introducing new Gate-All-Around (GAA) transistors at 2nm and beyond. The GAA transition enables much higher performance at the same power, but achieving these gains comes with dramatically higher process complexity. Building the complicated 3D structures inside a GAA transistor takes more than 500 process steps, many of which require entirely new ways of depositing materials with precision, repeatability and control – all within tolerances approaching the size of individual atoms.
Applied unveiled two chipmaking systems that leverage material innovations to create some of the most complex features associated with GAA transistors. The new technologies enable deposition of metals and insulating dielectrics – essential materials that dramatically impact the performance and power efficiency of advanced chips.
The Applied Producer Precision Selective Nitride Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) system uses an industry-first selective bottom-up deposition process to place silicon nitride only where it’s needed in shallow trench isolation (STI) trenches. It deposits a dense silicon nitride layer on top of the silicon oxide, which helps the isolation withstand later processing steps that would otherwise recess the STI material. The process operates at low temperatures to avoid any damage to the underlayer film or structure. By preserving the original shape and height of the isolation trench, Precision Selective Nitride helps maintain consistent electrical behavior, reducing parasitic capacitance, lowering leakage, and boosting overall device performance.
The Precision Selective Nitride PECVD system is now being adopted by leading logic chipmakers at 2nm and below GAA process nodes.
The Applied Endura Trillium Atomic Layer Deposition (ALD) system is an Integrated Materials Solution designed to precisely deposit metals in the most complex GAA transistor gate stacks. The system harnesses Applied’s legacy of leadership in metal ALD technology for advanced transistor applications. By integrating multiple metal deposition steps in a single platform, Trillium gives chipmakers the flexibility to tune threshold voltage across different transistors. Trillium leverages the proven Endura platform to create and maintain an extraordinarily high vacuum. This vacuum keeps wafers protected from impurities in the cleanroom atmosphere, which is critical when depositing multiple materials in the miniscule space between silicon nanosheets. By providing angstrom-level thickness control of metal gate stack layers, Trillium ALD delivers the tunability and reliability advanced GAA transistors demand, while improving transistor performance, power and reliability.
Applied’s Trillium ALD system has been an established benchmark for metal gate stack deposition at multiple generations of FinFET process nodes. The system has been highly tailored for GAA applications with new features to enable thinner work function metals and volume-less dipole materials that address the limited space in GAA structures, and it is now being adopted by leading logic chipmakers at 2nm and below GAA process nodes.
For more information:
Applied Materials
https://www.appliedmaterials.com/
