Dielectric Materials for Microelectronics

Abstract

Dielectrics are an important class of thin-film electronic materials for microelectronics. Applications include a wide swathe of device applications, including active devices such as transistors and their electrical isolation, as well as passive devices, such as capacitors. In a world dominated by Si-based device technologies, the properties of thin-film dielectric materials span several areas. Most recently, these include high-permittivity applications, such as transistor gate and capacitor dielectrics, as well as low-permittivity materials, such as inter-level metal dielectrics, operating at switching frequencies in the gigahertz regime for the most demanding applications. This chapter provides a survey of the various dielectric material systems employed to address the very substantial challenge associated with the scaling Si-based integrated circuit technology. A synopsis of the challenge of device scaling is followed by an examination of the dielectric materials employed for transistors, device isolation, memory and interconnect technologies. This is presented in view of the industry roadmap which captures the consensus for device scaling (and the underlying economics) – the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors. Portions of the survey presented here are selected from work previously published by the author [28.1,2,3].