High-K Transistors

New Technology

Moore’s law questioned ?

The world of semiconductors is going to have big change with a new technology.A change so inevitable to keep Moore’s law alive.Moore’s law states that,the number of transistors in an IC will double every 24 months.How can this number increase in an IC without decreasing its size?

Of course by decreasing size of whats inside.To be more clear the IC am talking about is processors in the very computer you use.A processor usually having a size of 3 by 3 cm,the real size is even smaller; this size is to accommodate the external connections. The IC consists of many millions of transistors.So to keep the Moore’s law true we have to double this million number of transistors. We attain this by decreasing or shrinking the internal components.

Then what is the big deal,just decrease it !!!! Here is the catch,how far you can decrease the size? suppose the size of transistors in olden days were a size of 3 bed room house,then if the house is shrunk as the transistor is shrunk to the current state then you can easily place the house in your palm. that is the factor of shrinking we have done until now. the problem is the dimensions of transistors is already in atoms. if we try to decrease the size further then it would behave weirdly. Also another thing of concern is that, the oxide layer is leaking electrons due to its extremely small size. this means our processors drinks more power, say for example our laptops,drain the battery quickly. So we have to find a new alternative or a new technology very fast.

The only way is to find an alternative to the material used. Yes they have found it. If materials with high-k is used which is made with new technology, then we can easily prevent leaking electrons. now ‘k‘ or di-electric constant is the ability of a material to block the current from flowing.

Even though they solved the dielectric problem, still they didn’t got the performance they wanted. After intensive experiments and simulations they found out if metal is used as gate electrode instead of poly silicon they will get much better performance without implementing any new technology.

So with all these advances, Intel is making their new line of Core 2 processors called Penryn at 45nm and some at 35nm resolutions.

So next time when you upgrade your system and when you see it rips or encodes your video like wind, don’t wonder and ponder about the technology that enables it to do all these.

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