w From the electron to chip manufacturing

> INTRODUCTION
THE COLLECTION

1 w The atom
2 w Radioactivity
3 w Radiation and man
4 w Energy
5 w Nuclear energy: fusion and fission
6 w How a nuclear reactor works FROM RESEARCH
7 w The nuclear fuel cycle
TO INDUSTRY
8 w Microelectronics
9 w The laser: a concentrate of light
10 w Medical imaging
11 w Nuclear astrophysics
12 w Hydrogen
13 w The Sun
14 w Radioactive waste
15 w The climate
16 w Numerical simulation
17 w Earthquakes
18 w The nanoworld

8 w Microelectronics

A TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION
A BRIEF HISTORY
HOW ARE INTEGRATED CIRCUITS MADE?
NANOELECTRONICS

© French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, 2010

Communication Division
Head Office
91191 Gif-sur-Yvette – [Link]

ISSN 1637-5408.

De l’électron à la fabrication des puces 8 > La microélectronique De l’électron à la fabrication des puces 8 > La microélectronique
2 > CONTENTS w
> INTRODUCTION 3
Microelectronics
enables new
applications on
account of its
miniaturization and
high performance.
For example in

© [Link]/CEA
medicine with this
DNA-chip
(on the right)

“Can electronic chips, which are constantly

becoming more powerful and cheaper, go
Microelectronics

A TECHNOLOGICAL
REVOLUTION 4 on being miniaturized?”
Making microelectronics
more widely accessible 5
More complex calculations 6
Innovative products
and services 7
introduction
© P. Stroppa/CEA

A BRIEF HISTORY... 8
The diode, the key electronic
ell phones, digital cameras, MP3 players, PCs,
device
From transistor to integrated
9
Observation of a silicon wafer using an optical microscope.
C games consoles, bank cards, cars: in just a
few decades, integrated circuits or "chips" have
Yet the outlook for the microelectronics industry
is far from clear. Transistors will soon become
circuit 10
Modern integrated circuits 11 taken over most of the things we use everyday. so small that they will be extremely difficult
This takeover is unprecedented in the history of to manufacture and operate. For example, the
HOW ARE INTEGRATED technology. It reflects the accelerated pace of thickness of some (oxide) insulators may be
CIRCUITS MADE? 13 innovation in the microelectronics industry, no greater than 1 nm, that is, 3 or 4 oxide
Increasingly expensive which has gone on producing ever smaller tran- atomic layers!
plants 14 sistors, resulting in turn in more powerful and Industry, research laboratories and institutes
The clean room, an ultra pure efficient integrated circuits. are setting in place research programs backed
environment 15 In 1971, the Intel 4004 processor contained by heavy investment. This is especially the case
Mass production 16 approximately 2,300 transistors. In 2006, the in the Grenoble region, a world-class center
Basic operations 17 prospect emerged of chips with a billion tran- for microelectronics. It is home to the CEA’s
sistors. This amazing yet compact intelligence LETI (Laboratory of Electronics and Informa-
NANOELECTRONICS 18 is becoming cheaper and cheaper: in 1973, it tion Technology) and ST Microelectronics manu-
Top down and bottom up 19 cost the price of an apartment to manufacture facturing in Crolles site combine forces. Finally,
The way forward for nano- a million transistors; today it costs the price of 4,000 people have been working in Grenoble
technologies 19 a post-it. since 1976 at Minatec, the leading European
innovation cluster for micro and nanotechno-
logies.

Conception et réalisation: – [Link] – Caption of cover: Substrate on support © [Link]/CEA – Cover: © CEA – [Link]/CEA – Illustrations: Yuvanoé -
Printed by: Imprimerie Sénécaut – Summer 2010

From the electron to chip manufacturing 8 w Microelectronics From the electron to chip manufacturing 8 w Microelectronics
4 w A TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION 5
40 YEARS OF CONTINUOUS PROGRESS AND “On a 45 nm printed circuit the etchings
NEW PRODUCTS AND SERVICES LIE BEHIND are a thousand times thinner than a
THE AGE OF MINIATURIZATION. hair.”

A technological MAKING MICROELECTRONICS

revolution
In order to maintain this pace of development,
MORE WIDELY ACCESSIBLE we must constantly call into question: the mate-
Microelectronics is not an established and rials used for circuits, electrical connections
stabilized business. The number of transistors and insulators; circuit architectures, which
per unit area quadruples every three years and represent a decisive factor in the final perfor-
the cost of the circuits halves every 18 months, mance; production equipment, some of it
particularly through mass production of hun- costing several million euros; the size of the
dreds of chips on each silicon wafer. silicon wafers on which circuits are produced
This growth curve in performance was (200 mm and 300 mm), along with all the
described in 1965 by Gordon Moore, cofounder methods used in their manufacture.
of Intel Corporation. It has proven so accurate To attain this level of performance, the most
that it is now known as "Moore's law" by all the significant factor is how thin the etchings are.
manufacturers in the sector, who rely upon it Initially this was expressed in This technic define
to plan their investments and research programs microns (millionths of a meter): the width of the
patterns molded on
years in advance. 0.25 micron, then 0.18 micron, the silicon.

MOORE LAW
chip
© Denis Duret/CEA

From the electron to chip manufacturing 8 w Microelectronics From the electron to chip manufacturing 8 w Microelectronics
6 w A TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION w A TECHNOLOGICAL REVOLUTION 7
“The power of current supercomputers can reach INTERNAL DESIGN OF AN MP3 PLAYER

1,000 billion operations per second... thanks to Microprocessor

Controls the operating system and software

advances in microelectronics.”

© CEA
Flash memory Analog-digital
A way of storing music converter
without using power
and then 0.13 micron. Since the turn of the performance reaches the teraflop.
century, the most commonly used unit is now Advances in integrated cir- 1,000 billion operations per
second.
the nanometer (a billionth of a meter). A pro- cuits are the cause of this
duction facility like Crolles produces 45 nm cir- giant leap, which has opened new possibilities: USB flash drive
Controls and encodes the Keyboard and display
cuits or etchings a thousand times finer than - The design of complex systems or products. connection with the computer Computer Display and data retrieval,
user interface
the thickness of a hair. This can be done entirely on computer. Depen- Manages the coding and decoding
of sound using psychoacoustic
These technological achievements have led to ding on the expected conditions of use, the com- algorithms

a fall in costs, an increased level of performance puter calculates the behavior of the materials,
and more widespread use of microelectronics, the dimensions of the components, and their
with two consequences: constantly increasing spatial layout, and then draws the plans. ©Philips

computer power and new products and services - Phenomenological modeling. The behavior of
for the general public. an airliner in turbulence or five-day changes in
the weather depend on a whole host of para- in-flight behavior. In design terms, computer be used to make telephone calls. The latest
MORE COMPLEX COMPUTATION meters. They can be modeled, that is repre- simulation allows an engine to be tested, for models are ultra-lightweight and feature games,
FOR DESIGN, SIMULATION AND sented by a series of complex operations whose example, before producing a prototype, to see HD cameras, and Internet connection for the
MODELING... result is very close to the actual phenomenon. how it will be affected by heating, road vibra- same price or less.
Post-war scientists carried out their calcula- - Computer simulation. This time the process tions or shocks. Finally, it should be borne in mind that most
tions on computers that occupied entire rooms, involves "manipulating" the models. For example, such equipment includes not one but several
and whose performance was no greater than by providing the weight of the aircraft and its INNOVATIVE PRODUCTS AND integrated circuits (microprocessors and
that of a modern calculator. Early twenty-first speed, plus the strength and direction of the SERVICES memory) that have been carefully designed to
century scientists have supercomputers whose turbulence, the computer can then predict its The computing power of integrated circuits can work together and enhance the overall perfor-
offer the general public high-performance, mance of the device.
user-friendly equipment, with a whole range
of features: cell phones, DVD players, digital
televisions, MP3 players, digital cameras, bank

“The most successful

cards, and so on. The chips power both the
computing functions and the interfaces (such
as the keyboard, display, and USB) that make consumer products
them intuitive and easy to use.
Moreover, the size and price of the products have more features,
are steadily decreasing. The consumer is the are more compact,
© C. Dupont / CEA

winner on all fronts. The cell phone provides

a perfect illustration of this phenomenon. The
and cheaper.”
© DR

first devices, which were very bulky, could “only”

ENIAC, the first computer. Tera, the new supercomputer.

From the electron to chip manufacturing 8 w Microelectronics From the electron to chip manufacturing 8 w Microelectronics
8 w A BRIEF HISTORY... 9
IN A CENTURY, MINIATURIZATION HAS ENABLED 1904 1948 1954
THE TRANSITION FROM THE VACUUM TUBE TO John Alexander Fleming, an John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and Texas Instruments manufacture the

THE ONE-MICROMETER-SQUARE TRANSISTOR.

English engineer, invents the William Shockley, three physicists first silicon transistor. They were
diode. This was the first electronic at the Bell Laboratories (USA), the size of dice, but within a
device and was used in radio produce the first transistor. decade would be as small as a
receivers. In 1907, Lee de Forest, Reliability, smaller size, reduced grain of salt. However, the vast
an American researcher, develops power consumption: the route to number of connecting threads

A brief history...
the principle further by inventing miniaturization opens up. This holds back the development of
the triode. major discovery would win them complex circuits.
the Nobel Prize for Physics in
a few key dates in the history of microelectronics a few key
1956.

THE DIODE, THE KEY ELECTRONIC

DEVICE
The history of electronics began in 1904 with
the invention of the diode, used in radio sets.
A diode is a vacuum device comprising a fila-

© DR
ment that emits electrons and a plate that
collects electrons when it is positively charged
(electrons have a negative charge). The posi-
tive or negative voltage of the plate is changed
in order to make or break the flow of current.
In 1907 the triode appeared, in which a grid
is added between the filament and the plate.
This grid acts as a modulator of the electrons:
depending on its polarization, it either blocks
them or makes them flow faster (current ampli-

© CEA
fication).
During the 1940s, triodes and other types of Vacuum diodes and transistors from 1965 (above).
valves were used in the first electronic compu-
ters capable of performing calculations faster complex calculations such as those required by
than a human being. The numbers and tasks physicists, the number of vacuum tubes needs
were coded in binary, using 0 or 1. For instance, to be multiplied, and they are bulky, produce
1 corresponds to the flow of electrical current, lots of heat and “fail” easily. This lack of relia-
0 to it being stopped. However, to carry out bility held back the development of computing.

WHERE DOES THE WORD “BUG” COME FROM?

The English word bug usually denotes an insect or These were all the more numerous because ENIAC
"creepy crawly". So then how is this connected with the was a 30-ton monster, occupying 72 square m and
bugs in software? It is quite simple. With ENIAC, the using more than 17,000 vacuum tubes.
world’s first computer, developed at the University of This was how bugs came to be part of the world of
Pennsylvania in 1946, a major cause of failure was computing…
small butterflies landing on electrical connections.
© Artechnique

From the electron to chip manufacturing 8 w Microelectronics From the electron to chip manufacturing 8 w Microelectronics
10 w A BRIEF HISTORY... w A BRIEF HISTORY... 11

“With the transistor, electrons move

1959
Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce,
1960
In the United States, the launch
1964
First integrated circuit produced
1974
The French engineer Roland
two American researchers, of the Apollo program, with $25 by CEA/LETI Moréno invents the smart card.
through solid material and no longer produce the first integrated
circuit, consisting of six
billion funding, gives a
tremendous boost to research on

through a vacuum.” transistors. Most importantly, computers and integrated

© CEA
they solve the problem of circuits.

© CEA
welding connections, which are
produced by deposition of metal
layers on the silicon. a few key dates in the history of microelectronics a few key dates

FROM TRANSISTOR TO Within a few years, they went from being the
INTEGRATED CIRCUIT size of dice to the size of a grain of salt!
In 1948, John Bardeen, Walter Brattain and The transistor was used in new radio sets - to
William Shockley, three American physicists, which it gave its name - and in computers.
invented the bipolar transistor and in doing so Yet another obstacle quickly became apparent:
opened up the age of microelectronics. the more transistors there were, the more welded
The bipolar transistor consists of an electron copper threads were needed to connect them,
emitter, a collector and a modulation device leading to a high risk of failure.
known as a base. The movement of electrons In 1959, the invention of the integrated cir-
HOW DOES A MOS Electron current
Insulator

no longer took place in a vacuum but in a solid cuit solved this problem. The transistors were
TRANSISTOR WORK?
material, semi-conductors by which the ability manufactured directly on the surface of the Grid
A MOS transistor consists of a source
This is made to drive the flow of electrons is silicon, and their connections were made by and a drain between which electrons
either of controlled. Reliability improved depositing metal layers on this surface. can flow via a conductor channel. Substrate
germanium or
of doped considerably. There were no further obstacles to the manu- This channel acts as a switch, Conductor
monocrystalline In addition, transistors were more facture of increasingly complex devices, com- depending on the electric charge of channel
silicon, for
example. compact than vacuum tubes. bining transistors, diodes, resistors and capa- the grid.
Conductor transistor (switch closed)
citors. The very first integrated circuit consisted
of six transistors. These devices would continue Depending on the polarity of the grid,
to be miniaturized and become more dense. the conductor channel is either open
or closed.

MODERN INTEGRATED CIRCUITS The performance of the transistor Insulator

In 2005, a microprocessor (the most complex depends mainly on the size of the grid.
integrated circuit) is a piece of silicon plate The smaller this is, the shorter the
distance the electrons have to travel in Grid
about 2.5 square cm. It can contain several
the channel and the quicker the
hundred million components. It is known as a system. Substrate
“chip" and enclosed in a protective case with
"legs" which provide connections with other
components of the device in which it operates.
Blocked transistor (switch open)
Most transistors are MOS (standing for Metal
Oxide Semiconductor), a technology deve-
loped in the 1970s. This enables the manu-
© DR

facture of transistors that consume less and

Technology research laboratory in the 1980s. allows the integration of resistors, another

From the electron to chip manufacturing 8 w Microelectronics From the electron to chip manufacturing 8 w Microelectronics
12 w A BRIEF HISTORY... 13
1991 1996 2003 TO PRODUCE THE "INFINITELY SMALL"
Michel Bruel, a researcher at
CEA/LETI, invents the Improve
The Intel Pentium Pro processor
uses 5.5 million transistors. This
First industrial production of
chips on silicon wafers 300 mm
GIGANTIC FACTORIES ARE NEEDED.
process for Silicon On Insulator would be followed in 1999 by the in diameter.
(SOI) manufacture, increasing Intel Pentium III (9.5 million) and
productivity tenfold. SOI will in 2002 by the Intel Pentium IV
become the key material for (55 million). This compares with

How are
producing fast, energy-efficient 2,300 transistors in the first Intel
circuits. microprocessor, the 4004,
released in 1971.

a few key dates in the history of microelectronics. a few key dates in

important component of integrated circuits.

The size of integrated circuits regularly increases.
(arsenic, boron, phosphorus) that guide and
facilitate the flow of the current.
integrated
The size of the silicon plates on which the
circuits are manufactured also increases to
maintain the same number of chips on each
plate. Over the past twenty years, the micro-
electronics industry has used a succession
The circuit can be etched on solid silicon or
a thin layer of a few hundred nanometers depo-
sited on an insulator.
Silicon On Insulator or «SOI»), which can make
faster and more energy-efficient circuits, is
circuits made?
of silicon ingots: 100 mm in diameter, then increasingly used. The best manufacturing pro-
200 mm, and then 300 mm. cess was invented in 1991 by a CEA resear-
The silicon is not used in pure form: it is "doped" cher.
by adding very small quantities of foreign ions

“A modern
microprocessor
consists of several
billion components
on a 2.5 cm square.”
© P. Stroppa / CEA
© CEA

From the electron to chip manufacturing 8 w Microelectronics From the electron to chip manufacturing 8 w Microelectronics
14 w HOW ARE INTEGRATED CIRCUITS MADE? w HOW ARE INTEGRATED CIRCUITS MADE? 15

“The air in clean rooms contains between

100,000 and 1,000,000 times less dust than
the air outside.”

INCREASINGLY EXPENSIVE PLANT THE CLEAN ROOM, AN ULTRA

Manufacturing an integrated circuit involves PURE ENVIRONMENT CAD: TOWNS SCALED DOWN TO
producing a collection of millions of intercon- On the scale of an integrated circuit, a minis- CENTIMETER SIZE
nected components on a surface a few centi- cule dust particle appears like a giant boulder It is impossible to design a circuit of several
million elements without using a computer:
meters square and a few microns thick, and blocking the channels that have been dug out
doing this for hundreds of identical copies for the electron flow. This is why production Every chip designer uses CAD (Computer-aided
design) to determine the main functions, select the
simultaneously. takes place in what is known as a clean room. modules in the stored libraries, arrange these
The more integrated circuits are miniaturized, The air is filtered A place where the humidity, modules in relation to each other, simulate the
the more expensive the factories that manu- and changed ten temperature, water and chemicals operation, etc. The exercise is long, difficult and
produced are strictly controlled.
facture them become. A “fab” (a production times a minute. incredibly detailed.
If you imagine that a
unit) costs roughly the same price as 300 Airbus It contains 100,000 to 1,000,000 times less microprocessor with
320s! There are several reasons for this: dust than the air outside. Workers always wear 100 million transistors
- The smaller the circuits become, the cleaner overalls that cover them from head to toe and had a side measuring
the working environment needs to be to avoid retain the organic material and dust particles 6 square km (the
surface area of a town
critically contaminating them. The require- that they produce naturally. of 100,000
ments for clean rooms are increasingly In addition, many cleaning processes are inhabitants), then each
© DR

stringent. carried out on the wafers between the stages grid transistor insulator
- The smaller they become, the more the of manufacture. In total they account for almost would be only one
Production facility of ST Microelectronics, at Crolles (Isère).
millimeter thick!
production machines are accurate, reliable, and a third of the total processing time.
difficult to develop and maintain. In
addition, they are only manufactured in small Despite all these efforts, the number of
series. functional chips on a production line does not
- The smaller they become, the greater the need Number of functional chips exceed 20% at the launch
produced as a proportion
for special materials, technically complex solu- of the number of chips of a new production
tions and additional manufacturing steps. manufactured. facility. The efforts of the
Today there are around 200 of these per cir- production team will quickly increase this figure
cuit. to 80% or even 90%.

“The price of a production unit is

equivalent to the cost of
© P. Stroppa / CEA

300 Airbus A320s.” A clean room

at LETI,
to CEA Grenoble.

From the electron to chip manufacturing 8 w Microelectronics From the electron to chip manufacturing 8 w Microelectronics
16 w HOW ARE INTEGRATED CIRCUITS MADE? w HOW ARE INTEGRATED CIRCUITS MADE? 17

“Mass production of hundreds of copies

reduces the unit cost per chip.”

THE BASIC OPERATIONS

1 4
HEAT TREATMENT ETCHING
Carried out in ovens at temperatures of 400 to
In contrast to deposition, etching removes mate-
1,200°C, it can be used to make layers of oxides,
rial from the wafer, with the aim of producing a
dielectrics to rearrange crystal lattices or to
pattern. There are two main methods: "wet" etching,
conduct certain doping operations.
which uses reactive liquids, and dry (or plasma)
© DR

© P. Stroppa / CEA etching, which uses reactive gases.

300 mm silicon bar.

2 DEPOSITIONS

MASS PRODUCTION, These put conductive or insulating layers on the © P. Stroppa / CEA

A VITAL ASSET surface of silicon: oxides, nitrides, silicides,

5 CHEMICAL MECHANICAL
tungsten, aluminum, copper, etc. They are pro-
The base material for the integrated circuit is sili-
duced by various techniques using gases or
POLISHING (CMP)
con, the most widespread chemical element on
Earth. It is extracted from sand by reduction, liquids: chemical vapor deposition (CVD), phy- This basic step combines a mechanical rota-
crystallized in the form of bars 20 or 30 cm in sical vapor deposition (PVD), pulverization, epi- tional motion and a chemical effect in order
diameter, then cut into wafers less than one mil- taxy, electrodeposition, etc. to planarize the surface of the wafer and to
limeter thick, which are polished to obtain © P. Stroppa / CEA
improve its quality. To do so, a part of mate-
smooth surfaces of around 0.5 nanometers. rial is removed. This technique, used several ©D
3 PHOTOLITHOGRAPHY times during the integration, improves also
R

Hundreds of chips are produced simultaneously

the performance of the photolithography
on this wafer through the repetition or combina- This is a key step and involves repro-
witch is realized on a flat surface.
tion of basic operations, heat treatment, ducing the circuit design to be
deposition, photolithography, etching, cleaning, created in a photosensitive resist. The
polishing and doping. resist is deposited on the substrate. 6 DOPING
This mass production, which brings down unit The light from a very low wavelength
To introduce atoms that will change its
costs, is one of the key assets of the microelec- light source (UV or lower) projects
conductivity into the core of the silicon, are
tronics industry. It explains why microsystems the image via a mask. The higher
realized by implantation or heated in ovens
manufacturers seek to produce their products with the optical resolution, the more the © Artechnique/CEA
to between 800 and 1,100°C, in the pre-
the selfsame technologies. Yet it also imposes miniaturization of the circuits can
sence of dopant gas, or bombarded with
restrictions on production: a handling error, a few be improved.
an accelerated ion beam through a mask.
seconds more or less and several hundred © P. Stroppa / CEA

circuits will end in the garbage can...

From the electron to chip manufacturing 8 w Microelectronics From the electron to chip manufacturing 8 w Microelectronics
18 w NANOELECTRONICS 19
AT THE CROSSROADS OF PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY,
A NEW CHALLENGE FOR MICROELECTRONICS IS “It is now possible to assemble the material
EMERGING, BRINGING WITH IT DISCOVERIES, APPLICA- atom by atom, to build transistors with a
TIONS AND JOBS. completely new design.”

Nanoelectronics “TOP DOWN“ AND “BOTTOM UP”

The advent of nanotechnology brings with it
chemistry, disciplines to which microelectro-
nics should open up.
technical challenges so ambitious that they THE WAY FORWARD FOR
could act as a brick wall against the powerful NANOTECHNOLOGIES
stream of innovation that runs through the In another major development, microelectro-
industry. How can we etch lines that are only nics will interfere more and more with the world
a few nanometers thick? How can we effecti- of micro and nanosystems: accelerometers for
vely insulate electrical tracks with materials no airbags, clothing that can communicate,
more than a few atomic layers thick? How can camera capsules to introduce a micro-camera
we make transistors through which only a hand- into the body, biochips for biological analysis,
ful of electrons can pass? laboratory chip analysis, etc.
Two approaches are being pursued in parallel
to overcome these obstacles:
- The top down approach: this involves pushing
to the limit the extreme miniaturization of the
MOS transistor, continuing the work of the
past 40 years;
- The bottom up approach: this instead involves
assembling the material atom by atom, to build
molecules that are then joined in transistors
with a completely new design. This approach
makes use of basic knowledge of physics and

© CEA
Biochip LabPM.

These devices combine sensors and chips,

which are essential for processing the data
gathered. Their production will necessarily call
for nanoelectronic technologies to meet minia-
turization and cost objectives. We are at
another cultural and disciplinary crossroads,
© Artechnique/CEA

© CEA
© CEA

namely between electronics and micro and

Nanofils. nano-level systems.

From the electron to chip manufacturing 8 w Microelectronics From the electron to chip manufacturing 8 w Microelectronics