Toshiba replaced the conventional silicon dioxide gate dielectric material with nitridenitrided hafnium silicate (HfSiON). The company used the new high-k dielectric in its 65nm process to fabricate 50nm gates on a test LSI device. Initial production of LSIs using the new material for low power mobile products is slated for 2005.

The company said new dielectric materials are needed as chips shrink to ever smaller transistor design rules. As the gate dielectric grows ever thinner with each new chip generation, larger gate leakage current can result, according to Toshiba. This in turn causes higher power consumption which is a major problem for mobile products.

The company turned to HfSiON as a gate dielectric material that has low leakage current, making it suitable for low power LSI chips.

Toshiba reported the experimental results of its new LSI Tuesday at the VLSI Symposium in Kyoto, Japan.

Separately, IBM Corp. and Infineon Technologies A.G. reported at the Kyoto VLSI Symposium that they have integrated a 128Kbit magnetic RAM core into a test logic system-on-chip (SoC).

The companies claimed that the 1.4-square-micron MRAM cell is the smallest size achieved so far by the industry.

Wilhelm Beinvogl, chief technology officer of the Infineon memory products division, said initial production of the alliance's MRAM products is expected early in 2005. The nonvolatile MRAM could replace conventional memory to allow computers to be turned on and off instantly in the same way as a light switch, the companies said.

IBM and Infineon have transferred MRAM technology to an existing joint venture fab, Altis Semiconductor, in Essonne, France to further R&D and future production of the new memory device.

By: DocMemory
Copyright © 2023 CST, Inc. All Rights Reserved