The Role of the Trench Capacitor in DRAM Innovation

Cost has been the strongest driving force for growing the DRAM market. Since die cost is closely related to the number of dies on a wafer, wafer diameter size has continually increased, and memory cell size has been reduced. To cope with the resulting dilemma of cell size vs. capacitance, the author invented the trench capacitor cell. The author documents its implementation, the "soft-error problem" that ensued, and efforts to solve it.