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The Effect of Moore&s Law on the Growing Role of Transmission Electron Microscopy in the Semiconductor Industry

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2020

John Mardinly
John Mardinly*
Affiliation:
Intel Corporation, Materials Technology Department, Santa Clara, CA , 95052
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Abstract

TEM has been used for semiconductor device characterization since the 1980's, when Marcus and Cheng first demonstrated the feasibility and utility of applying TEM to semiconductors. The frequency of use of TEM has accelerated briskly due to the continual shrinkage of devices as predicted by Gordon Moore and now documented in the SIA roadmap (http://public.itrs.net/Home.htm). TEM use has also grown due to application of FIB techniques which make possible high precision cross-sections of specific structures. This relentless shrinking has resulted in difficulties in preparing suitable specimens. Many of the features and interfaces in a device may be curved rather than planar, and as the radius of curvature begins to approach the thickness of a TEM specimen, it can result in “geometrical blurring” of features, both for imaging and microanalysis. The origin of this blurring is illustrated in Figure 1, where it can be seen that a single electron may pass through two different features, and as a result, they are not resolved.

Type
Microscopy in the Real World: Semiconductors and Materials
Information
Microscopy and Microanalysis , Volume 7 , Issue S2: Proceedings: Microscopy & Microanalysis 2001, Microscopy Society of America 59th Annual Meeting, Microbeam Analysis Society 35th Annual Meeting, Long Beach, California August 5-9, 2001 , August 2001 , pp. 510 - 511
Copyright
Copyright © Microscopy Society of America 2001

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References

1.Marcus, R.B. and Cheng, T.T., TEM of Silicon VLSI Devices and Structures, Wiley, N.Y., 1983Google Scholar
2.Moore, G. E., Electronics, Vol. 38 No. 8, April 19, 1965Google Scholar
3.Basile, D. P., Boylan, R., Baker, B., Hayes, K., and Soza, D., MRS Proceedings, Vol. 254, 1991CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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5. Special thanks to David Agard and his staff at UCSF for their assistanceGoogle Scholar