Insight into the removal and reapplication of small inhibitor molecules during area-selective atomic layer deposition of SiO2

As the semiconductor industry progresses toward more complex multilayered devices with ever smaller features, accurately aligning these layers with respect to each other has become a bottleneck in the advancement to smaller transistor nodes. To avoid alignment issues, area-selective atomic layer deposition (ALD) can be employed to deposit...

A Simple and Efficient Procedure for Identifying the Compressing Stage in Two-Stage Amplifiers

We propose a fast and simple method to accurately determine the compressing stage in a two-stage amplifier system based on reverse intermodulation and hot S-parameter measurements. The method uses no specialized hardware and needs little reconfiguration, simplifying the measurements. We demonstrate its validity over a broad range of amplifiers...

High resolution acoustic metrology by combining high GHZ frequency ultrasound and scanning probe microscopy

In order to extract ever more performance from semiconductor devices on the same device area, the semiconductor industry is moving towards device structures with increasingly complex material combinations and 3D geometries. To ensure cost effective fabrication of next generation devices, metrology solutions are needed that tackle the specific...

Quantum dot arrays in silicon and germanium

Electrons and holes confined in quantum dots define excellent building blocks for quantum emergence, simulation, and computation. Silicon and germanium are compatible with standard semiconductor manufacturing and contain stable isotopes with zero nuclear spin, thereby serving as excellent hosts for spins with long quantum coherence. Here, we...

Three-Tiered Risk Assessment for Engineered Nanomaterials. A Use Case for the Semiconductor Industry

Safety of engineered nanomaterials is a new scientific field, which draws increasing attention in the literature. Among the challenges the field is facing are the insufficient amount and quality of nanotoxicological data and the ambiguity in the metrics describing the exposure. This results in substantial difficulties in the actual...

Characterizing electron beam induced damage in metrology and inspection of advance devices

A set of innovative immersed grating based spectrometer designs for METIS

We present innovative, immersed grating based optical designs for the SMO (Spectrograph Main Optics) module of the Mid-infrared E-ELT Imager and Spectrograph, METIS. The immersed grating allows a significant reduction of SMO volume compared to conventional echelle grating designs, because the diffraction takes place in high refractive index...

Interferometry for picometer-level dimensional stability measurements

The accuracy of high-end industrial equipment and the reliability of produced goods can be limited by dimensional drift phenomena. Examples are the life cycle stability of instrumentation for space missions and the tight requirements for measurement uncertainty in the integrated circuit semiconductor industry. Re-calibration intervals of...

Thin-film transistors and circuits on plastic foil

We present our recent achievements in organic semiconductor technology in two emerging application areas. We show that the performance of our technology approaches the requirements for Electronic Product Coding RFID tags. Also, backplanes of OLED displays are enabled by the unique compatibility of pentacene transistors with high-k gate...

EBG-based 60 GHz on-chip antenna in passive silicon

At most frequencies currently in use for short range data communication the available bandwidth is limiting the data rate. However, around 60 GHz there is an unlicensed frequency band with ample bandwidth appointed to support high data rate communication. Moreover, semiconductor technology for this frequency range is maturing and price levels...