UMC's Researchers Extend Traditional Nitrided Gate-oxide to beyond the 65nm node

Nitrogen profile engineering used to downscale effective oxide thickness towards 1nm to improve semiconductor performance

UMC, a world leading semiconductor foundry, today announced that its research and development team has achieved a significant engineering milestone by shrinking the Equivalent Oxide Thickness (EOT) of nitrogen doped silicon oxide (Oxy-nitride, SiON) gate dielectrics to approximately 1.0 nm using a new nitrogen profile engineering technique. This accomplishment allows more aggressive scaling of transistors to enhance overall semiconductor performance without the introduction of new materials.