New Materials Required for ERDs

In the new revision of the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS), the chapter on emerging research devices (ERDs) has been substantially changed and broadened, compared with the 2003 edition.

The section on non-classical CMOS, prominent in 2003, has been shifted to the PIDS (process integration, devices and structures) and FEP (front-end processing) chapters, and a completely new section on emerging research materials (ERMs) has been added. Many emerging research devices will require materials with dramatically improved or new properties. To address this need, the emerging research materials working group has identified the critical materials properties required for fabrication and operation of these new devices and potential materials solutions. Fabrication of many of these new materials may require new chemicals, synthesis techniques, and metrologies to characterize and improve their performance. The new emerging research materials section provides a comprehensive new treatment of these research needs and opportunities.

Also added are new sections discussing a taxonomy for nano-information processing and proposing a new set of fundamental guiding principles. The taxonomy section is focused on an organization of generic information processing layers. The guiding principles are intended to bring the perspective of fundamental requirements to the many new and quite different approaches proposed to scale information processing by orders of magnitude beyond that attainable with ultimately scaled CMOS. Furthermore, a new critical analysis has been performed, evaluating the potential performance of the emerging research memory and logic technologies as they mature.

Again in 2005, two emerging memory technologies (nano floating gate memory and engineered tunnel barrier memory) are seen to offer attractive performance advantages compared with similar commercially available memory technologies. Conversely, the realm of emerging research logic technologies that offer significant performance advantages compared with CMOS requires continued discovery research to identify promising new approaches. The possible exceptions to this perspective are one-dimensional structures, such as nanowires and nanotubes, applied to FET-like structures. The Table lists the most difficult near- and long-term challenges in the emerging technology field.

Find more information on emerging technologies.