Toshiba has a nanowire transistor breakthrough

BOFFINS AT JAPAN'S Toshiba have emerged from their smoke filled labs claiming that they have had a breakthrough in the development of a nanowire transistor.

The transistor will be a major candidate for a 3D structure transistor for large scale integration (LSI) fabrication in the 16nm generation.

It seems that researchers have managed to get 1mA/μm on-current on a nanowire transistor. This is the highest current level managed so far and they did it by reducing parasitic resistance and improving the on-current level by 75 per cent. The discovery means that they are close to getting practical nanowire transistors.

At the moment when the size of current planar transistors scales smaller, current leakage between the source and the drain at its off-stage, that is, off-leakage, becomes a critical problem. To overcome this, transistors with a 3D structure are being mooted as the solution.

Apparently a silicon nanowire transistor can suppress off-leakage and achieve further short-channel operation, because its thin wire-shaped silicon channel - the nanowire channel - is effectively controlled by the surrounding gate.

The big problem has been parasitic resistance, which apparently can't be dealt with using insecticide. By optimising gate fabrication and significantly reducing the thickness of the gate sidewall from 30nm to 10nm, Toshiba's scientists seem to have managed to kill the parasites stone dead. µ