Silicon technology directions in the nanoelectronics era

For decades the scalability of MOS technology has fostered continual improvements in almost every dimension of electronic products. However at ∼130nm, VLSI has neared a variety of limits threatening compromises, and the industry has returned to a state more like the 1970s where new directions in materials, processes and devices are being intensively evaluated. However the complexity of the challenge today is many orders of magnitude higher - e.g. controlling atomic thickness over billions of components - while economic pressures, both on R&D as well as time to yield, are driving a new industry landscape. This presentation explores key technology challenges and reviews main industry directions - many times across traditional R&D boundaries - that enables the pervasive growth in application content promised by the nanoelectronics era.