Researchers at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell University have successfully demonstrated that microwave technology could be used to address a major challenge faced by the semiconductor industry today, aWith every passing year, electronic devices are getting smaller. This is thanks to the advances made in microelectronics, which are made possible by the manufacturing of electronic components at nanoscales..
As microchips shrink in size, the concentration of phosphorus required to produce the desired current has increased significantly. "We need concentrations of phosphorus that are higher than its equilibrium solubility in silicon. That goes against nature,” said James Hwang, who led the research team at Cornell. “The silicon crystal expands, causing immense strain and making it potentially useless for electronics.
For semiconductor manufacturers, this would be a critical point beyond which they would no longer be able to shrink the electronics.iStock/OLEKSANDR IAROVYIThe Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company , the world's first dedicated semiconductor foundry and the leading semiconductor manufacturing, had theorized that microwaves could be used to activate excess dopants like phosphorus.
When they attempted this in the lab, TSMC found that microwaves heated the dopants unevenly, just like it heats food unevenly. This inhibits consistent activation of the dopant, which was then attributed to the "standing waves" produced by microwave annealers. Standing waves are waves that have the same amplitude and frequency but are moving in opposite directions.
“A few manufacturers are currently producing semiconductor materials that are 3 nanometers. This new microwave approach can potentially enable leading manufacturers such as TSMC and Samsung to scale down toThe breakthrough could also help change the architecture that has been deployed by the semiconductor industry for over two decades.
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