A leading edge 90 nm technology with 1.2 nm physical gate oxide, SO nm gate length, strained silicon, NiSi, 7 layers of Cu interconnects, and low k CDO for high performance dense logic is presented. Strained silicon is used to increase saturated NMOS and PMOS drive currents by 10-20% and mobility by > 50%. Aggressive design rules and unlanded contacts offer a l.0pm2 6-T S R A M cell using 193nm lithography. IntroductionThe power dissipation of modern microprocessors has been rapidly increasing, driven by increasing transistor count and clock frequencies. The rapidly increasing power has occurred even though the power per gate switching transition has decreased approximately (0.7)' per technology node due to voltage scaling and device area scaling. Figure 1 shows these trends for Intel's microprocessors and CMOS logic technology generations. In this paper we describe a 90 nm generation technology designed for high speed and low power operation. Strained silicon channel transistors are used to obtain the desired performance at 1.0V to 1.2V operation. renw 5 B 0 n 1 0 0 0 0~ Pentiud U) E 1.5 1 0.8 0.6 0.35 0.25 0.18 0.13 Technology (pm) Figure 1: Power and transistor switching energy trends. procesS Flow and Technology FeaturesFront-end technology features include shallow trench isolation, retrograde wells, shallow abrupt sourceldrain extensions, halo implants, deep sourcddrain, and nickel salicidation. N-wells and P-wells are formed with deep phosphw rous and shallow arsenic implants, and boron implants respectively. The trench isolation is 400 nm deep to provide robust inma-and inter-well isolation for N+ to P+ spacing below 240 nm while maintaining low junction capacitance. Sidewall spacers are formed with CVD Si,N4 deposition, followed by etch-back. Shallow sourcedrain extension regions are formed with arsenic for NMOS and boron for PMOS. Nisi is formed on poly-silicon gate and source-drain regions to provide low contact resistance.

P+IPW N+/NW -l r l r i 0 . 8 . 0 0 . ! f . *. 0 t -. " ' . ! ' . A 180 nm generation logic technology has been developed with high performance 140 nm L G A~ transistors, six layers of aluminum interconnects and low-& SiOF dielectrics. The transistors are optimized for a reduced 1.3-1.5 V operation to provide high performance and low power.The interconnects feature high aspect ratio metal lines for low resistance and fluorine doped SiOz inter-level dielectrics for reduced capacitance. 16 Mbit SRAMs with a 5.59 pm2 6-T cell size have been built on this technology as a yield and reliability test vehicle.